Soldier B
by Velocity Girl1980
Summary: Harry was never so naive as to believe the ghosts of Northern Ireland had been laid to rest. Not while Bill Crombie still shadowed his days and haunted his nights. Invited to take part in a special committee for peace and reconciliation, he finally gets the chance to tell his story. Sequel to Quis Separabit, but set mostly pre-series. Mostly a Harry story, others will still appear
1. Nobody's Child

**This is a direct sequel to Quis Separabit and does include references to that story. This was actually included in the original plot of QS, seeing as it's such a huge part of Harry's backstory, but I cut it out thinking the up-coming film was going to cover it. Since then, it appears the plotlines and character names have been changed, so I'm doing it instead!**

**The first part of this introduction takes place about two months before the second half. **

* * *

**Chapter One: Nobody's Child (Introduction)**

Only the small things remained. Stained tea cups on the draining board; slanted sympathy cards propping each other up on the mantelpiece in the living room and spent toiletries in the bathroom. Clothes in plastic bags by the front door, ready for the charity shop. Relics of a life, boxed up and waiting for disposal. He moved through the rooms, silent and shrouded in his own subdued grief, checking for the final traces of his mother's existence. Long, slanting rays of early spring sunshine lit up the front room; the dust continued to settle in the long, draughty hall. The stairs creaked loudly, no matter how softly he trod on each step, the sound resonating through the empty house. Entering her bedroom felt indecent. Touching her underwear, bras and knickers, made him feel ashamed and tainted. There was little room for dignity where the dead were concerned and, as Lisa had told him, better her son doing it than a total stranger.

Although she had been ill for months, the end still seemed to take him by surprise. It was something he had been forewarned about, making his surprise even more paradoxical. Everyone had told him, too, that grief was like a roller-coaster of emotions. Up and down, then inside out and defying universal laws of gravity. True, he had been relieved at one point. Relief soon followed by crippling guilt that he could ever have felt anything but raw grief for her. Now, it felt more like grief was a hall of mirrors. Emotions distorted, bent out of shape and reflecting twisted falsehoods back at him. Which was real? Which was solid? None of them were.

Just last night, he had been making a cup of tea. In between fetching the cup and the kettle boiling, he had entirely forgotten what he was meant to be doing. Thoughts had crept up on him, small realisations and the implications of his mother's death, had come up and smacked him round the face. He was reaching for the sugar when he realised he is an orphan. Now, he is nobody's child. A man grown, thirty-three years old, he had curled up on the kitchen floor and wept like a wounded animal.

Jolting himself back into the here and now, he performed his grim duty with a firm set jaw and his dark, grey eyes almost closed. He didn't want to see it; he just wanted it done. Systematically, he opened each drawer and tipped the contents into a plastic bin liner without touching private garments. The secrets held in these most intimate of places would remain secrets. Only the occasional piece of jewellery, or her favourite reading glasses and keepsakes were saved from the yawning, plastic abyss. Once it was done, he knotted the bag and left it by the door.

He went to take down the old net curtains from the window, until the large dresser caught his eye. Her perfume was still there, the bottle half spent. It's sickly, sweet odour still lingered in the air, the same way it did when he was a little boy, and she had gone for one of her rare nights out. Just for a moment, he thought that was what she had done: gone down the pub for drinks with friends and, if he waited up long enough, she would come back. But she was gone now. It was something he had to repeatedly remind himself of.

Also on the dresser, photographs had been wedged into the edges of the mirror frame. He recognised his pudgy infant self. A schoolboy with a nervous smile on his face, also him. Skating over himself, his eye fell on two men clad in the unmistakable attire of the 1970s. It was a fuzzy, early colour photograph of two men with their arms round each other's shoulders, with two women reclining on a picnic blanket in the near background. He smiled as he looked over his father's face, but he did not recognise the other man: smaller than his father, with a wild shock of blonde curls that made him look as if he'd been wired up to the mains. One of the women was his mother, the other he did not know. But she looked up at the camera, timid and uncertain. Giving up on his guessing game, he flipped it over to see if his mother had marked their names:

"My Bill, with Harry and Jane Pearce," she had written in fading pencil.

"Harry Pearce," he murmured softly, tapping the picture against his forefinger.

The name resonated, jarring somewhere deep inside. So much so, he got to his feet and reached inside the pocket of his jeans, to where his phone was. He scrolled through the numbers so fast he missed her name and quickly backtracked. Thumbing the call button, he got up and paced the length of the room while the photo he had been holding drifted to the floor.

"Lisa, hey," he greeted her. "It's me."

"Hey you," she returned from other end of the line. "I'm glad you called, actually. I know we're not together anymore, but I still worry about you."

A stab of guilt punctured his unthinking haste. "I know, I am sorry. I was meant to stay in touch, especially after what happened a few months ago…" he paused, drawing breath. "Well, actually, it's about that. Sort of."

"Will, why're you even worrying about that now?" asked Lisa. "That guy hasn't been back and you have bigger worries-"

"I know, but listen," he cut over her, not intending to be rude. "That man who came round the house, the note he gave you to give to me, who did he say killed my Dad? It was Harry Pearce, wasn't it?"

It was just before winter that the strange Irishman had called round their shared house, late in the night. He hadn't been there, and Lisa took the message. A note that had since been passed off as a cruel hoax and burned before their relationship ended and that house sold. However, Lisa sounded hesitant.

"Yes, it was Harry Pearce," she confirmed, before lapsing into a brief silence. "Have you found something out?"

"Yes, they knew each other. I found a photo of him and some woman. His wife, I think. Has the same name, but could be a sister I guess," he explained, stooping to collect the photo again. It was then he noticed that his mother and the other woman were sitting quite far apart, both looking stiff and uncomfortable. To him, it suggested that all they had in common was the friendship of their husbands. "It's definitely his wife. Harry and Jane Pearce, it says on the back. He and Dad are standing with their arms round each other's shoulders."

"So they were clearly friends then?" she asked. "Which only adds weight to that note being a lie and the messenger a cruel liar."

She was right. Both men were completely at ease in each other's company; soaking up the sun and enjoying a picnic with their respective wives, smiling broadly. Despite her sitting down, he could just see his mother's belly had started to swell, but not quite enough to warrant maternity wear. With a cold jolt of dread, he realised it must have been only weeks before his father was killed in Belfast.

"I read something in the papers a few weeks ago," he began. "Something about a missing soldier who was killed in the seventies, whose body was only recovered last month. It turns out he was set up by some other soldier who was secretly working for the terrorists. That person could have killed more than one man. He could have killed my father. It could have been Harry Pearce."

"Will, there's an awful lot of 'could have's' in that sentence," Lisa replied. "Look, you're grieving; I bet you haven't slept since Deborah died; I bet you aren't eating properly and I bet your head's a mess. I'll be there in a few hours and I'm taking you home. Okay?"

Suddenly dejected, he flopped down on the bare mattress and sighed. "Okay."

"You're not alone, William. So don't be," she added, with finality.

"Thanks," he replied, before hanging up the phone.

The messenger from Ireland had come a-calling back in November, just as his mother had started to grow sicker. His relationship with Lisa was just beginning to hit the rocks. With everything else going on, even late night callers bringing scurrilous rumours of his long dead father had been pushed out of his mind. The details now seemed sketchy. The only reason he remembered the timing of the caller was because of the talks happening in Northern Ireland a few days later. He had gone to Hillsborough in a last ditch attempt at finding out the truth about Bill Crombie, for the sake of his dying mother as much as himself.

Before he could sink into another morass, he rose from the bed and pocketed his phone again. There was still work to do before Lisa arrived to bring him home and there was one more thing he needed to check. Not only did Harry Pearce sound familiar, thanks to the note, but he looked familiar. Had they met before? He could no longer tell. But he found the photograph on top of the bedroom TV set. A group photo of his parent's wedding. For a second, his eyes scanned the row of beaming faces, until he found Harry Pearce once more. Stood right beside his father, acting as Best Man.

Will's eyes narrowed as he homed in on Pearce, raking over his suit and screening out all others. His mother clearly knew him, too. She never mentioned him. Not once. But then, there was a lot from back then that she did not talk about. Carefully, he unfastened the back of the photo and slipped it out of its frame. That and the picnic photo were stacked on top of each other, ready to be taken home with him. His mother was gone, there were no more feelings left to hurt; there was no more damage the truth could do. After all, he was nobody's child now.

* * *

"A letter for you, Sir Harry."

The Receptionist's voice chimed across the entrance hall as Harry swept past. Extending his left arm, he plucked it from her manicured fingers without breaking his step. "Thank you, Sara."

"You're welcome!"

She was so eager, so enthusiastic. You could tell she was new.

Outside, the early summer sun was shining; it was six o'clock and it was Friday. He was out of Thames House so fast that, had they not had such thorough cleaners, they wouldn't have been able to see him go for choking on the dust cloud billowing in his wake. After allowing himself a moment to savour his freedom, he stepped into the back of his car, the driver already getting into gear to bear him home. While he reclined in the backseat, he directed his gaze out of the window, watching the public slipping past.

"No Lady Pearce today, Sir?" asked the driver.

"It's our wedding anniversary," he replied, smiling brightly. "I'm not to see her until I reach the restaurant. It's bad luck, or something like that. Anyway, she left early to get all done up before I got home."

"Very good, sir."

Settling into a comfortable silence, Harry suddenly remembered the letter. He had stuffed it into his inside jacket pocket for safekeeping. But, once he retrieved it again, he looked at it suspiciously, inspecting the corners for the envelope for signs of tampering. There were none, but the mark of Whitehall did nothing to ease his flickering worry as he wondered what it was. A sudden demand to return to the office; a red alert that surely wouldn't normally come through the snail mail. It could be any number of things lurking in wait, ruining his weekend.

_Just get it over with_, he inwardly chided himself.

Accordingly, he slipped his middle finger under the fold of the envelope and tore it open. The first thing he found inside was a hand-written note from William Towers. _"Damn you, Harry,"_ he began, magnanimously. _"I know this isn't exactly your sort of thing. But you helped bring this Truth and Reconciliation Process to pass, the least you could do now is bloody well take part in it. Do this for me, and I swear I'll never make you share your toy chest with the Russians, ever again."_

After that came the exact same invitation he had received a few weeks previously. An invitation to 'tell his story' of conflict in Northern Ireland. He would be anonymous, alone and free to unburden himself of decades of trauma to a sympathetic outside audience. It was the presumption of it that irked him. They assumed he would be traumatised. They assumed he would embrace the opportunity to open his chest and pour out the secrets of his heart. They had even assigned a name to him; he would be known only as 'Soldier B'. Even if he was talking about his MI5 work, he would still be 'Soldier B'. He would appear on screen as nothing more than a talking shadow, a haze of darkness with a voice actor speaking his words. Then what? The tapes would be relayed at a hearing in Derry's Guildhall and then be buried in a vault somewhere.

_It's your wedding anniversary_, he had to remind himself as his buoyant mood started to evaporate.

It wasn't for at least another two hours, when he saw her again, that his mood finally lifted. Ruth was waiting for him outside the restaurant, elegant in a navy blue, full length gown and several inches taller in heeled shoes. The gown's low neckline showed off the understated diamonds he had gifted her that morning and her hair had been swept up behind her head, showing her slender neck. She turned to him with a shy smile on her face, blushing like a debutante as they greeted one another with a kiss.

"You look beautiful," he told her. "So incredibly beautiful."

And so she did.

Their table was a discreet one, tucked away on the first floor of the building and almost out of sight at the back. An empty wine bottle with a candle wedged in the open neck and encrusted with years of wax formed a centrepiece and Harry watched her fruitlessly resist picking at it.

"Go on," he said, "you know you want to."

She looked troubled. "What will I do with the wax, though? They'll know it was me if I just leave it here."

"You vandal!" he laughed. "Anyway, wine. Real wine, I mean."

"I hope that's your meaning. We'll not get much out of that one," she said, nodding to their waxy table decoration.

Meeting like this reminded Harry of the early days. As time passed since their wedding, their relationship's troubled beginnings began to recede in his memory, leaving room only for the good times. Rose tinted, he knew that. But there was no use dwelling on the painful past, not when she had gifted him a future he never could have imagined, or felt less that he would ever deserve. Every so often, he remembered her years of exile when he had no idea where she was, or even if she was still alive. But even those occasions became fewer and fewer, if no less painful.

So, when their wine came and they had placed their orders, they let the waitress go and drank a toast to themselves. One year ago. Just one year.

"I'm so happy," she said, expression softening as her gaze met his. "I never thought it would be possible."

She was almost echoing his own musings.

"Something changed back there," he said. "I don't know what, but I'm glad it did."

Ruth's smile broadened briefly, before she turned peculiarly serious. He thought she was about to say something, but she only sipped her wine before giving it a swirl round her glass.

"The thing is, Harry," she began, ominously.

It felt as though the temperature had suddenly dropped. "What?"

"Well," she began again, before stammering into silence. With a great sigh, she gave up beating him around the bush mercifully quickly. "Towers wanted me to talk to you about this Reconciliation thing. I did say today wasn't the best day for it, but you know Towers, Harry."

"I know Towers," he replied. "But does Towers know me?"

Now that she had her secret mission off her chest, she relaxed. Her smile came more naturally and her demeanour softened. "I can understand why you don't want to do it," she said. "But don't you think you should?"

It had been six months since they returned from Belfast and its meandering talks. While there, he had faced up to more ghosts than he dared believe existed. A thread of his life that had been hanging loose had been snipped and tied, after thirty long years. Why pick at the holes again now?

"I know my identity won't be revealed," he began, attempting to vocalise his reticence. "But I feel like I'm being asked to divulge painful episodes for the entertainment of others. Ruth, these are things I haven't even told you."

"Good to know we've reached a stage where we can be totally honest with each other," she replied, drily.

"It's in the past, Ruth," he retorted. "I don't need to –"

"But it's not in the past, is it?" she cut over him. "Harry, only a few months ago you asked Tariq to hack into the database of an estate agent's and fix things so that Will Crombie definitely got an apartment he put an offer on, shaving a few grand off the price in the process. Is that because you feel obligated? Do you still blame yourself for his father's death?"

Nervously, he fidgeted with the knot of his tie. "So, you know about that-"

"I know everything that goes on on the Grid," she pointed out. "But that's not the point, Harry. What else have you done to ease that boy's way through life? Would you have done had you not blamed yourself for his father's death?"

"Bill was my closest, oldest friend Ruth," he replied, keeping his voice low as the subject heated. "Of course I have watched over his son. How could I, in all conscience, walk away and leave him to his fate with almost no one to protect him?"

It was nothing. Harry couldn't understand why Ruth was making such a big deal. He had checked up on Will Crombie, made sure he got into the school his mother wanted, made sure he got into the University he chose and, once or twice, made sure he got a job he wanted. It wasn't as if he'd fixed the boy's grades or took it upon himself to top up his bank balance at will. It was only force of circumstance that had prevented Harry ever openly identifying himself to Will Crombie.

"Maybe it is guilt?" he said, throwing the question back at her. "But so what? He would have been my godson anyway. If his father had lived, I would have been part of his life."

"Oh, like you have been for your own children, you mean?" she retorted, brow raised in scepticism.

He walked into that with his eyes open, and the knowledge that he did so only made him even more angry and ashamed.

"My children- ," he began, before faltering. "That's not the point, Ruth."

So many feelings erupted inside him, so many years of buried guilt, that he needed to get out into the open. If he stayed, he knew they would soon be in open conflict.

"Where are you going?" she asked as he pushed back his chair.

"Outside," he replied, tersely.

"Harry, sit down," she sighed. "I didn't mean it like that. All I meant was…"

But her justifications faded into the background noise as he walked out, leaving her flapping in his slipstream. Once outside, he slipped into the crowds of revellers just hitting the bars for the night. At that hour, it was effortlessly done. Blending in, fading into the background. Alone with his memories, with the past rising up inside him. So far up he almost felt like he was two-hundred feet in the air, back on a tower block in West Belfast. He could see Bill now, pale and clammy as he fixed the radio antennae on the roof to pick up the dodgy seventies bugs in the Felon's Club just up the road. A road two hundred feet below them.

"Harry, I'm gonna puke. I'm gonna puke, then I'm gonna fall. I'll fall and puke at the same time."

He had sighed. "Here, let me do it."

And he had. He had been brave then, stepping in to fix the damn antennae. He shifted its position while Bill staggered down and vomited copiously over a republican mural that had been erected over the rooftop's dormer windows. Far, far below the drums pounded and pounded. A tribal rhythm as Black Saturday got underway and the Orangemen were out in force. If the breeze died down, he could hear the pipes too. But always the Lambeg drums. Boom, boom, boom; all around the city. From the ground, you could feel the earth tremble. On the Falls Road far below, you could feel the burn of the petrol bombs sailing through the air.

Jolted out of his reverie, Harry came to a rest beside the Thames, somewhere on a bridge. Even outside, he could feel invisible walls closing in. The past, once more, was coming to get him and there was nowhere left to run.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Reviews would be very welcome, if you have a moment. **


	2. Unto the Breach

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this, it means a lot. Thank you also to Batteredpen, who inspired some insights into Harry's character. **

* * *

**Chapter Two: Unto the Breach**

Harry remembered the sea, most of all. A vast, shivering expanse of flat slate-grey badly illuminated by the full moon; fading into an ever darker blackness as he looked out over the prow. Cold iron rails were rough under his skin as he steadied himself against the sway of the swells. He could smell the salt; taste the acrid tang of it whenever he wet his lips. Even in the pitch black of night, he could hear gulls swooping and wheeling overhead, diving for the catch and coming up with beaks full of salty-seaweed. _Better luck next time_, he thought as he caught sight of another silver under-belly, plummeting down for the kill.

The cold. It was so cold at sea he thought his hands were frozen to the rails. He had been fooled by the soaring early July temperatures back on land. This far out, at this time of night, it was always winter. Beside him, a cigarette glowed orange in the darkness and a plume of smoke is caught on the wind, blown into his face. Bill inhaled again, leaning casually against the rails with his back to the seas that Harry finds so entrancing. No smoking in the cabins, so Harry had been prised from his bunk to stand outside with his friend while he chains his way through a pack of twenty.

He could sense his friend looking at him; those dark eyes boring into him. So dark that if Harry turned to face him, he could only see a flash of the whites. But Bill remained silent.

"You're going to say something," said Harry, resigned. "Or, you want to say something, but it's nothing you haven't already told me a hundred times-"

"Shush!" Bill cut him off and flicked his cigarette butt overboard. "I told you already: Debs and I will help you out. Jane enjoyed the picnic we went on last weekend, didn't she?"

Harry shrugged. "I suppose she did. No, I know she did. She got on well with Debs. What I mean is, I don't know if it's doing any good."

This was meant to be their honeymoon period. The time spent fucking like rabbits in every room in the house, on every surface and at every moment. The newly-weds; the insatiable lovers united at last. Instead, he had spent his post-wedding bliss breaking up stilted silences with desperate declarations of: "I couldn't find the right time to tell you," and "I was going to tell you the truth, I swear!" His lines were so worn Jane could repeat them before he said them. She may even have moved to giving them numbers by now.

As ever, Bill had stepped in.

"Once Jane gets to know a few of the other wives she'll realise she's not alone," he opined. "My Debs was in the same place-"

"But you at least told Deborah before your wedding day," Harry cut in.

"Well, okay, you got me there," Bill admitted. "There really is no getting around your hideous sense of timing, Harry. Anyway, Debs will call in on her while we're gone, make sure she's okay and all that."

Harry raised a pained smile. "I am truly grateful," he replied, a tad embarrassed. "Especially under the circumstances."

The circumstances being that Deborah Crombie was now nearing her sixth month of pregnancy. Already, he was casting around for ideas on especially lavish Christening presents as some mark of gratitude.

"It's nothing, Harry."

But it wasn't 'nothing'. It was everything. Jane meant the world to him. She would be his gateway into a normal life. He would come home from work, shut that front door and be with her and their future, notional children and it would be just them. A cocoon from the harsh realities of counter-terrorism. Their children would play with Bill and Debs' children. They would stay for their tea and sleep over at weekends. Grow together… stay together. A germ of normality in a life that promised to be anything but.

"Ay-up, here she comes," said Bill, nodding to the distant shores.

Harry looked out over the opposite rails, to where distant harbour lights now penetrated the sea mists. Pin-pricks of light diffusing in the fogs, nebulous and fuzzy. Cranes and forklifts stood stark against the pre-dawn sky, black and hulking in the ports. Night lifted its shroud, slowly as a strip-tease, to reveal the smoking, sulphurous ruins of Belfast City.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more…" said Harry, watching the docklands draw closer.

Bill laughed. "Or close the wall up with our English dead," he added.

Harry watched as he light another cigarette, the flame of the zippo briefly catching the gold of his wedding band.

* * *

Now Will twisted the ring round his finger, nervously. He found the nick in the gold with the pad of his thumb; pushed down on the dent as though trying to make it worse. It was a nervous habit that he ceased as soon as he realised he was doing it. He almost apologised, before remembering he was alone now and returned his attention to the red front door he had just knocked on. In such a fluster, he could only manage that for a second before he had to glance over his shoulder again, making sure he remembered where he left his car.

Before he could do that, however, footsteps sounded from within the semi-detached house, jolting him out of his frantic reverie. He gulped and tried to gather his wits.

"Ms Townsend?" he asked, as the door opened barely an inch before snagging its chain.

She was a slender woman, much shorter than him and with pale blue eyes. Her once dark hair was now liberally streaked with silver, but still he recognised her from the photographs.

"Oh, hello there," she replied, soft-voiced. "You must be William?"

No one had called him that since he was a small boy. He found himself wondering if that was just the school teacher in her. Regardless, she let the door off its chain and opened it fully, granting him entrance. He thanked her as he passed, finding himself in a plushly carpeted hallway. Open archways led into the kitchen and living room, while a flight of stairs led up to the first floor. Standing there made him feel ungainly, like a stray piece of furniture, he was out of place. But rather than letting him linger there, she led him into the living room, where the table had been set for two. A tea pot complete with knitted tea cosy, a tray of biscuits set in the middle and a Victoria sponge on a china plate. He wondered whether she was expecting more intimate acquaintance along later, or whether she had really gone to all that trouble for him. After all, he had called out of the blue and was nothing more than a completely stranger to him. Still, she gestured to a chair at the head of the table.

"Please, sit," she said. "And don't look so alarmed. It's only tea and cake."

He laughed at his own awkwardness. "Apologies. I'm at that awkward age where half my friends are married and the other half are still too drunk to find their phones. This level of hospitality is beyond the reach of both sets."

She laughed as she poured them both tea and settled in the chair directly opposite his.

The room was pleasant. Wide, with French doors left open to tempt in a summer breeze, bringing with it the scent of the garden. Flowers he could not put a name to, lined the borders and a washing line rotated slowly on a pivot, pushed by the weak wind. Inside, a sofa was lined against the wall and two armchairs were positioned on either side of a small TV. But, everything was in silence as they made small talk about the weather and the state of the roads. But when they did get to the matter at hand, she did so readily.

"I was ever so sorry to hear of your mother's death, William," she said. "Deborah Crombie was very kind to me, back then."

He raised the ghost of a smile. "She was always very caring," he stated, blandly. "I honestly didn't think you would remember her."

She looked surprised. "I remember her well," replied Jane, before cutting herself off. Her expression grew distant and she bit her lip, before adding: "I well remember your father, too."

Will set down his teacup and his thumb once more found the ring, twisting it and pushing in the dent. Nervous, automatic. Guilt welled up in him again. He and Lisa had gone to extraordinary lengths to track Ms Townsend down, including calling every woman called Jane who happened to be living in London. They found her eventually. What surprised him most was her lack of surprise at hearing from him. Then, at that moment, she sipped her own tea and looked across the table at him.

"But you're not here to talk about your parents, are you?"

It was a statement, more than a question. Her cold reading abilities made him blush, as though he should have thought up some better excuse for intruding upon her life.

"Not really," he replied, drawing a deep breath. "It's just that I got some more information about my father's death. That was all."

He wanted to blurt it all out: the whole sorry story. But now that he was here, he was beginning to doubt his wisdom in tracking her down. It was all beginning to feel embarrassingly futile.

"What, exactly?" she asked.

"Back in the autumn, my ex-girlfriend got a note that was meant for me. All it said was that Harry Pearce killed my father. I don't have a hope of tracking Mr Pearce himself down, all I know is he's MI5 – like my Dad. So, er, here I am," he explained.

He watched her reaction carefully, trying to sense whether he had angered her or dredged up painful memories. But her face remained passive, unsurprised. She set down her cup, carefully in the saucer and toyed with the handle, distractedly. He could see that she was picking her words carefully, forming and framing the events as she recalled them. But he could not think what to read into it.

"Harry didn't kill your father," she stated, with an air of finality. "No. He wouldn't. Couldn't. I owe that man nothing. I'm not saying this out of a lingering affection, nor misguided sense of loyalty. But I believe in fairness and even Harry deserves that. He is not a murderer. A killer: yes. A murderer: no."

The last part of that answer snagged in his mind, causing his brow to crease as he fit his head around it. "Right," he replied, at length. "So, there's a difference?"

Jane smiled. Not a mocking smile, just a familiar gesture almost borne of affection.

"I was like you once," she explained. "It's like your brain only registers the black and white, while the grey passes you by without a trace. But when you're married to a man like Harry Pearce, even for a brief time, you soon learn to see the hue and the shape of the grey areas. Had your father lived, you would have known that too."

Even when she spoke of such things, she maintained her air of stillness. Will found it almost unsettling.

"I suppose," he answered, vaguely. "My mother did say marrying into the service was difficult."

It sounded like an unthinking blandishment, something he didn't think Jane would hold much truck with. But if she found his comment as such, she was too polite to let on. She simply picked up her cup again and gazed down at the surface, once more lost in her own thoughts.

"There really isn't a lot else I can tell you about your father's death," she said, after a long pause. "Other than that Harry was not responsible. Well, not much…"

But Will was at a stage where he was willing to latch on to anything. "Even if it's small, I would love to know, Ms Townsend."

She drew a deep breath, letting it out again in a long sigh. "It's difficult, because all I can tell you really is the effect it had on Harry. He changed after your father was killed. He came back from Belfast different. Altered. Looking back now, I would call it 'traumatised'."

Traumatised. The word made Will's heart palpitate and his mouth run dry. He swallowed another mouthful of tea just to wet it again. Meanwhile, Jane leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Long, slender fingers pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment, a second in which to steel herself for whatever she had to tell him. She had composed herself again by the time she lowered her hand and looked back at him again.

"You see, Harry never told me about his job. At least, not until we were married. On the same day in fact," she explained. "And it was your mother who tried to help me through that. I think your father asked her to do it, but she didn't seem to mind and God knows, I needed a friend: someone who understood. Sometimes, looking back, I wonder whether I was being unreasonable to be so angry. But I felt like I had been lured into a trap. I felt like Harry had entrapped me in this marriage, and only told me the truth once I couldn't escape."

Will raised a brow. "That's not an overreaction," he said. "Pearce sounds like an arsehole, to be honest."

"Oh, Harry gets better and better, believe me," she replied, with a mirthless laugh. "To all intents and purposes, I put our wedding day revelations behind us. So he's a spy? Did it really matter in the long run? Even if it did, I decided to give our marriage my everything. Your father's murder traumatised him so much we left for Paris within weeks of it happening. He couldn't have stayed in Northern Ireland, not after that. But even then, Harry didn't confide in me. There were other women he confided in."

Will picked up the implications easily. "I'm sorry if this is dredging up bad memories," he said. "We don't have to talk about it."

She waved a dismissive hand. "I'll spare you the details. But, Harry wasn't one of these men who rolled home at three in the morning smelling of another woman's perfume, or with lipstick on his collar. He's a Spy; he's used to being undercover and he's far too clever for that. No. I only found out about his affairs because one of his adversaries deemed it convenient that I should know, so they made sure I found out."

Will's brow creased. "Seriously?"

Jane nodded, still eerily at ease despite the topic of conversation. "You see, that's the world Harry operates in. Your emotions, your feelings, anything that could be perceived as a weakness, will be turned into weapons and used against you. Your loved ones become bargaining chips; leverage to be held over you like a Damocles Sword. I was that leverage and my children – in their turn – would have become likewise. That's what killed us, in the end; his wedding day moment of truth was merely the beginning. If you're wondering why I'm even telling you all this: it's what I want you to know and understand, before you go jetting off into Harry's peculiar orbit."

"Oh, Ms Townsend, I'm not interested in joining MI5," he replied, quickly. "I just-"

"Maybe not," she cut in, quite effortlessly. "But you still want the truth, don't you?"

He had no answer. There were times when he ached for the truth about his father. Other times, when he was a child, he just built a father in his imagination: moulding him into something superhuman and calling it 'Dad'. But that child was gone, his fervent imagination set to flight by the realities of the world outside his bedroom window.

"I need the truth now," he replied, quietly. "But I don't think I need to go off down a dark and dangerous path of MI5's making."

She was smiling again. "Don't be so sure," she cautioned. "Anyway, I can't help you get in touch with him. But Catherine, my daughter, can and she's agreed to help you. But promise me you'll think this through, first? Consider everything I've told you and everything you already know about your father. I may not know what happened, but I saw the effect it had on a man I loved and extrapolating from that: it wasn't pretty."

From that dire warning, she moved fluidly to cutting the Victoria sponge. Will watched her, already contemplating all that she had said. It hadn't come from some angry place, deep inside her. She spoke calmly, she still had an air of stillness – almost serene. She spoke about deeply disturbing aspects of her ex-husband's life as if it was a trip to the supermarket that went wrong. Ancient history. But a warning nonetheless and one that he didn't take lightly.

"I've got to do it," he said, softly. "I don't have a choice."

"Well then," she answered. "That settles it. But do have some more tea and some of this cake before you go. It's actually quite nice to have a visitor, and from an old friend – almost. I meant to stay in touch with your mother, but after the divorce and what have you … with the best will in the world, people still drift apart."

Will nodded his agreement and thanked her for the cake. "We moved back to York anyway, after Dad died and I was born. She needed help from her parents."

"More than understandable," she replied, before stopping what she was doing. She met his gaze from across the table. "You look like him – your father that is. The hair and the eyes. You have his colouring. That could have been his ghost on my doorstep."

"A lot of people say that," he laughed.

Only dimly could he recall his paternal grandparents. He was so much like their son that they couldn't bear to look at him. But that was a memory that brought a flicker of sadness curling around his heart, one he quickly cut away before he could grow maudlin. All of that, before even making a start on the cake.

* * *

"You were dreaming again last night." Ruth's tone was flat, neither disappointed nor overly concerned. She followed the statement up by flopping down on the edge of their bed and removing her shoes. She did not dig for further information, nor did she seem to want to be drawn on the matter. But, underneath that glacial exterior she was itching to know what it was all about.

Harry knew this was his cue to volunteer the information himself. But his mood was less than obliging. He thought back over the years, to when the first green shoots of their feelings for each other first poked through their frozen winter surfaces. Sometimes, it seemed, he had been jumping through hoops for her ever since. From tiptoeing around her fluctuating feelings – that seemed to vary from one minute to the next – to trekking all the way to Cyprus to dig her out of the bother she'd gotten herself into there. He had done the chasing, the running and the jumping through hoops. Now, it was her turn.

"I'm sure they were very pleasant dreams," he replied, equally devoid of feeling.

He pulled at the knot of his tie, loosening it before giving it a good wrench. Once off, it hung limp and crumpled from his wrist like a stray nylon entrail. Before letting it fall to the floor, he fixed it with a look of utmost loathing. All the while, Ruth was sat at the edge of the bed with her stockings half pulled over her ankles and fixing him with an imploring look, wide blue eyes unflinching under his solid death glare. It might have worked before she made those remarks about his parenting skills and refused to apologise. But hasty words were like broken plates. Broken and the damage had been done.

That doleful gaze continued to follow him around the room as he hung up his shirt and dropped his trousers.

"You know something, Harry," she began. He steeled himself for the deep, undoubtedly insightful analysis of his shortcomings that was inevitably forthcoming. "Sometimes, I think there's so many secrets buried in your past that there's huge, emotional explosion just lurking round the corner. That you're keeping something from me that's so huge and I'm just treading through this minefield, hoping I don't say or do the wrong thing-"

"Oh really," he cut over her. "Sometimes, I get the feeling I'm living with an emotional vampire who feeds off other people's misery and will use whatever emotionally manipulative, cod psycho-babble to wheedle her next fix out of me. Frankly, Ruth, you're bleeding me dry and I've nothing left to give."

She looked as though he had struck her. Stunned into silence, she carried on gaping at him wide-eyed and silent. Inwardly, he resolved not to give an inch and carried on preparing for bed. No one – not even Harry Pearce – felt like a row when they were in the nip.

"That's not what I'm doing, Harry," she finally said, gathering her wits. "Believe it or not, I'm actually trying to help you."

She spent half her professional life on the Grid acting like he didn't have feelings, that she was the only one with the capacity for grief. Sometimes, the memory of it rankled him. It kept coming up at him from the shadows, and now it was in plain sight. An elephant in the room made up of harboured resentment and years of chewing glass to keep her happy.

"If telling me I was a hopeless parent was your way of 'helping', you have very unorthodox methods," he replied. "Now I'm exhausted. I just want to get some sleep."

He switched off the lamp before climbing into bed. But as he rolled on, Ruth rolled off. The mattress dipped suddenly, before springing back into shape in the absence of her. He heard the bedroom door open and then slam shut. With a heavy sigh, he groaned up at the ceiling and closed his eyes.

"There really is no getting around your hideous sense of timing, Harry."

Perturbed, Harry opened his eyes again. The room was still in darkness, he could feel the weight of the cat curled up at his feet. But it can't have been the cat who spoke. He turned his head, to where Ruth normally lay. Where now Bill smiled back at him, the duvet pulled up to his chin. The smile reversed into a frown.

"You're all right, she'll come round," he added. "Just call our Debs around. Bring her out for a picnic. I'd come along myself if it wasn't for McCann's handy work. But hey, maybe Jane can take my place? You can regale them all with tales of how you got me killed!"

Harry was appalled. "Fuck off, Bill!"

He tried to roll over, but he couldn't move. Eyes shut tight, he counted to five in his head, willing the paralysis to wear off. Which it did, with an almighty wrenching effort on his part. Back in the real world, he rubbed the residue of the dream from his eyes, before sinking back into his cold, empty bed.

* * *

**Thank you again for reading; reviews would be very welcome. Thank you. **


	3. No Surrender

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it's greatly appreciated. Thank you.**

**Apologies if there's any errors with 1970s spy technology, which I can only guess was severely limited compared with today's. Further apologies for all those who aren't familiar with British Indie band "The Smiths" who have several songs referenced in this chapter.**

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**Chapter Three: No Surrender**

A flare of brilliant orange flame lit up the darkening car park, travelling in a perfect arc as the Molotov cocktail soared into the bonfire. Swallowed by the stacks of wooden crates and rubber tyres, the light went out once more. But within the blink of an eye, there was a whoosh of oxygen being sucked into a burning vacuum and the bonfire suddenly blazed. Hundreds of spectators cheered as the flames lashed against the night sky. A deadly fanfare of live gun fire heralded the burning of Pope Paul VI, sitting at the very top of the inferno. Cheap nylon Irish tricolours of green, white and gold shrivelled black; melting and dripping into the ash of the smouldering Pontiff.

'_If the reports prove true_,' Harry thought to himself, '_at least they'll have a new Pope to incinerate next year.'_

Bill was watching the gunmen. Harry followed the line of his gaze, to a raised platform away from the fire. He counted them: one, two, three and four. Faces hidden behind balaclavas, their automatic weapons continued their lethal stutter as round after round was discharged over the heads of the triumphant crowds. Behind them, union jack flags swayed on the soft summer night's breeze.

_For God and Ulster. No Surrender. Fuck the Pope and the IRA. _Slogans of naked loathing emblazoned on scores of banners. The Summer of Love never reached these shores.

"So, what do you make of our new allies?" asked Bill, still watching the gunmen on the dais.

Harry's stomach churned as he inhaled the burning rubber, his eyes streaming in the heat and smoke. A great rolling, wave of intense heat that was soon driving the crowds back to a safer distance.

"My enemy's enemy is my friend," he replied, citing an old cliché.

Friend? Naked hostility was so heavy in the air, Harry thought he could cut it with a blunt butter knife. Gangs of youths carried hatchets and talked openly of 'hunting Taigs'. Fire crews were pelted with bricks to keep them back from the blaze and the RUC lined their jeeps in defensive formations all down Great Victoria Street. All the while, pop music blared from loudspeakers in a desperate attempt to inject a little party atmosphere into the eleventh night celebrations.

"It's like a school disco at a Borstal," Bill observed, wryly.

Harry smirked. "A Borstal run by the inmates, at least."

They were supposed to be blending in. So far, they perched nervously on the bonnet of their civvie car and cast wary eyes over proceedings. Edgy, over-cautious, they lingering just beyond the reach of the flames. The bonfire had been stacked so high it almost equalled the nearby Europa Hotel in height. Journalists and news crews were filming from the safety of their balconies, all too sensible to get in with the blooded rabble that populated the 'party'.

Harry turned to Bill as they set off at a slow pace through the crowds. But he was watching the fire burn, his dark grey eyes reflecting the bright orange flames. Perspiration from the intense heat beaded his brow. He stopped dead in his tracks, one hand suddenly gripping Harry's elbow.

"Did you see that? I think it was a person."

Harry could see it. The mitre burning already, the straw incinerated in the heart of the flames. He shrugged. "Just another straw Pope thrown by the crowd. Don't worry about it."

They walked on, skirting the edges of the car park. Two moths slowly drawing closer to the blaze. The person they were looking for was far more likely to find them than they were him. His cover was deep. There wasn't a single Catholic left in Belfast on this night – except for him. He had his hood up, drawn down low over his forehead. A Glasgow Rangers scarf was pulled up over the lower half of his face, covering his mouth and nose. He looked like any other British Loyalist out hailing the dawning of the glorious twelfth of July. Harry almost walked straight past him, but Bill noticed.

"All right, Brendan, what have you got for us?"

They fell into step with each other, but did not stop. Nor did they look at each other, or show any outward sign of familiarity.

"There's going to be a meeting of the IRA Army Council at the Felon's Bar on the Falls Road, on the twenty-seventh of August. All the Army Council will be there," the man replied, lowering his scarf. "They'll be planning future hits, operations overseas, financial planning and gun smuggling. They're talking to the Libyans, again. You can listen in from the top of the Divis Flats, can't you?"

Although Harry kept his eyes focused on the lively 'celebrations' breaking out all around him, his attention was firmly fixed on what their asset was telling them. The information made his heartbeat race.

"Who will be there?" he asked. "What are their names?"

He could see the Asset's face now. A man in his late twenties, clean shaven and sandy haired.

"Patrick McCann will be there and so will Sean Mallon," he replied. "I don't know the other names, that's not how the organisation works. But they're the two Belfast Commanders who'll be there."

Bill was dissatisfied too. "Can you find out for us? It's what we pay you for."

"Aye, steady on," replied the Asset. "I can do. But give me the devices, I'll plant them in the Felon's Club. There's no way you'll get in there, with or without my help."

"He's right," said Bill, before Harry could argue. "Our best chance is setting up radio antennae at the top of the Divis Tower and listening in from there."

Divis Tower: a two hundred foot high, twenty-storey apartment block due for demolition within the year. They had passed it on the way down, already it was empty and sealed off from the public. Furthermore, the British Army had already been using it to set up surveillance equipment to snoop on all those Catholics on the Falls Road.

Harry turned back to the bonfire, where the Popes of straw still burned, where the Irish flags were long since reduced to molten nylon. "Let's do it," he said. "Thanks, Brendan. Next time we meet, it'll be at the docklands. It's too crowded around here."

Bill agreed, discreetly brushing a bundle of banknotes into Brendan's hands as they parted company. Gladly, the pair of them headed back towards the car, left for safety's sake by the side of the road. Away from the fire, getting further from the crowds, they slipped into a city devoid of life. All bars were closed, steel shutters barred every shop front and the people – those who yearned for peace and an end to ancient hatreds – fled the city days ago. It was almost a ghost town, and theirs the only car passing under the intermittent streetlamp glare.

The clock struck midnight and fireworks exploded across the city skies.

* * *

"Honestly, Ros, it was bizarre," he said, over thirty years later. "The most bizarre spectacle I had seen in my life."

They were sitting together in The George. Sunday trade was lagging, just the way he liked it. It meant they could chat in peace, without fear of interruption. Meanwhile, Ros sipped at her red wine, listening intently. After lifting the glass to her lips once more, she looked thoughtful.

"I've seen it all on the news before," she said. "The bonfires they light and the parades of Orangemen on the twelfth of July. You always get these Protestant politicians banging on about the wonderful carnival atmosphere. I guess it's a little different to outsiders."

Harry almost choked on his pint. "That's some bloody carnival!"

"Maybe you and I have been going to all the wrong carnivals?" she laughed. "I don't know about you, but I always think Notting Hill. Diversity. Music. Inclusion. Not raging fires, live gun fire and burning the Pope."

"It wasn't even that," he added. "Bill and I, we walked through Belfast city on the afternoon of the eleventh. It must have been noon, no later than one in the afternoon. Quick as a heartbeat, the shops began shutting down; droves of people just started fleeing the city. There was a real sense of panic. We thought there was a bomb, but they just wanted to get well out of Belfast before the 'carnival' began. Within an hour, the whole city was deserted. I haven't seen anything like it before or since."

The bad old days of Northern Ireland lay like a crust over his mind. Even without Ruth getting on at him; although her having the bit between her teeth had not helped. But it was there. It had been there, in reality, since it happened. Popping out at him from around blind bends, or lurking unseen in the corner of his mind. He was just becoming less able to keep the trauma at bay: his defences were wearing thin, his resolve weakening.

Ros, as complex and acerbic as she always was, softened as she looked at him intently from across their table. At least she had chosen their spot well: a cubby set back from the main bar room, accessible only via a side door for discretion. Now, she probed his Achilles Heel with as much tenderness as she could muster.

"Harry, it sounds like Ruth has been a relentless nag over this issue," she began. "But why can't you talk about it? Not necessarily to me, or to Ruth. I mean in general. Why can't you just say: this happened to me and my friend?"

It was a pertinent question. Maybe it was a generational stiff upper-lip. Maybe it was just the abject horror of what unfolded on that August afternoon, so many years ago. He tried to articulate his feelings into words, but failed. There was no use trying to describe it, the range of his vocabulary – as broad as it was – still felt unequal to the task. But, he had to give Ros something.

"Bill wouldn't want me dwelling on what happened," he offered, quietly.

"He was your best friend, Harry. He wouldn't want you tearing yourself apart over it, either. He wouldn't want you living the rest of your life like it was some never ending penance, I'm sure," she replied. Before he could argue, she added: "and where is Ruth, anyway?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I can't face her again today. Not after last night."

"You can always come round mine, if you're really stuck," she offered. "Lucas is there too, but he won't mind."

Spotting the exit, Harry ran towards it. "So, it's all back on for you two is it?"

She gave him one of her withering looks, normally reserved for those in petty officialdom. "Don't try and change the subject."

"I'm not!" he lied. "Anyway, thank you all the same: but I think I had better see her again. Even if it is only for round three of this weekend long row we've been having."

"That's the spirit," she replied. "You should probably go to that Truth and Reconciliation thing on Tuesday, too."

Harry sighed heavily, but before he could say anything his mobile rang. He rolled his eyes as he fished it out of his breast pocket. "That'll be her, no doubt," he grumbled. Then, he saw the caller display and his heart lifted skywards. "Oh! Catherine!"

Taking that as a cue for privacy, Ros quickly excused herself to go to the Ladies as Harry answered his daughter's call.

"Catherine, hi," he answered.

"Hi, Dad," she replied, cheerily.

From her tone, there was nothing wrong with Graham, so the reason for her call intrigued him all the more.

"I'm going to be in London for a while and was wondering if you wanted to meet up?"

"I'd love to," he replied, eagerly. "When? Where?"

There was a brief pause; it sounded like she was consulting with someone else. But he couldn't bring himself to care about that.

"Er, in about an hour maybe?"

_A soon as that?_ He would have to make his excuses to Ros, but knew she would understand.

"Sure. Where are you? I'll meet you there."

"Well, I'm in Hyde Park at the moment. So, how about the Serpentine?"

"I'll see you there," he confirmed.

With this unexpected boost in his mood, he replaced his phone and drained the remainder of his pint. So much for never making an effort with his own children – this was something he would delight in telling Ruth later in the evening.

* * *

Catherine ended the call and turned to him with a smile on her face. "We have an hour to kill before Dad gets here."

"An hour!" Will was taken aback. "I thought it'd be next week, or something."

After years of getting nowhere, it seemed as if everything was happening at once. Too fast. His mouth ran dry and his nerves went into spasm. But Catherine maintained her composure perfectly.

"Come on," she urged, one hand extended towards him. "Walk with me. You need to relax."

He drew a deep, steadying breath. "I suppose I do."

His father wouldn't have been like this: a bag of nerves and inching towards free fall. Still, he did as she suggested, and followed her as she set off around the Diana memorial. An imperfect circle of water, ever flowing onwards but not really going anywhere expect its endless circle. It sounded familiar to him.

"To be totally honest with you, Will, I don't know him as well as I should," said Catherine as they fell into step with each other. "I can't say whether he'll talk to you or not. This could all be a waste of time."

Will raised a pained smile. "It's for my Dad; it's not a waste of time."

She looked almost abashed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound-"

"I wasn't having a go, honestly," he quickly cut in, embarrassed that he'd given the wrong impression. "It's just, I think I know where you're coming from with this. But there's no pressure on you, or anything. It doesn't matter how this meeting goes; all I know is that I've got to try."

She looked up at him, her hazel eyes widening. "That's rather sweet, actually."

Will felt the colour rising in his face. "Not really, I just want the truth."

It was a beautiful day, with an early summer sun already providing ample heat. A few hardy souls were paddling in Diana's big circle of water and couples stretched out on the grass, soaking up the rays. But, they were both dressed in jeans and long-sleeved sweaters, in defiance of the weather. Eventually, they found a pleasant patch of grass away from the crowds and sat down.

"Thanks again for doing this," he said, once they were settled.

Catherine shrugged. "William, it was really nothing." They both fell silent as the reference registered with him. He almost cringed. "Sorry!" she added. "I bet people say that to you all the time?"

He nodded, vigorously. "Sure, but what difference does it make?"

"Quite a lot, I would imagine. I bet that joke isn't funny anymore," she replied, grinning.

He shook his head, sadly. "Heaven knows, I'm miserable now."

They both laughed as Catherine put her hands up. "No more, you win! Or I'll have to introduce you to my Dad as the boy with the thorn in his side!"

After a moment to compose themselves again, Will's fleeting moment of light-heartedness passed. He drew his knees up to his chest, almost defensively as he looked out over the park that surrounded them. Everywhere he looked, there were families out for the day: strolling, paddling and playing. Mums and Dads, even Grandparents out with several generations of relatives. For all his life, Will had had that hole in his life. A faceless, colourless void where his father should have been.

"You've turned all serious again," Catherine pointed out.

Her voice jolted him out of his reverie. "Just nerves."

He watched as she plucked a daisy from the ground and twirled it round her fingers. "Don't be," she said, at length. "Dad can be … tactless, at times. He's old school, you know. But underneath it all, he cares. He cares more deeply than he could ever let on. I guess he can't afford to let on."

He remembered everything Catherine's mother had told him only a few days previously. Ever since then, his foreboding at meeting Harry Pearce had grown, the more he dwelled on Ms Townsend's cautionary tales. Only when he thought of his father, the note and the truth, did his resolve strengthen again.

"I have no wish to impose on his life, or be a pain in the arse. It's just, my mam got this letter not long after she died. A letter inviting her to take part in some Truth and Reconciliation thing that's due to start on Tuesday. They wanted her to talk about her husband being murdered by the IRA. Obviously, she can't, but I can. But I'd prefer to hear it in private, instead of in front of an audience. Mr Pearce is the only link I have between the truth and my Dad."

Catherine listened, fixing her gaze on him as he talked. The daisy lay discarded at her feet now.

"Well, I'm going to stay with you," she assured him. "I won't intrude; I'll sit at another table or something. But I'll stay all the same."

They had all met that morning. It seemed strange. She seemed like someone he should have known all his life.

"Thank you," he replied, softly. At the back of his mind, he was aware of time ticking onwards. A countdown towards a reckoning, of some sort. "I appreciate not being alone, for once."

"No," she replied, getting to her feet. "I'm with you. Now come on, or we'll be late. And Dad doesn't know you're here."

"What!" Will retorted, horrified.

Catherine glanced over her shoulder. "Catch him off guard," she explained, breezily. "Sometimes, it's the only way you can get that man to talk at all."

They bypassed the gallery and headed straight for the Serpentine bar and kitchen. A single storey building with decorative columns lining the front patio. They found a spot outside, where they could take advantage of the fresh air and relative quiet, away from the music playing indoors. Now that they were in place, Will had to resist the urge to check his watch every five seconds. He sat hunched forwards in his seat, only running a hand through his tangled hair in an effort to look as if he was finally relaxing, but it did not work. Catherine caught his eye and informed him she was getting them both a strong drink to see them through the next hour or so. Will didn't argue.

When the shot of neat vodka came, he downed it in one.

"Feel better?" asked Catherine.

"A bit," he replied, tentatively.

Catherine smiled, nodding to someone just over Will's shoulder. "Good, because he's here."

With his heart in his throat, he whipped round in his seat, to where a middle aged man entered. Larger, his unruly mass of blonde curls were yesterday's news. But Harry Pearce was just about recognisable from the photo in his mother's room. From a distance of only a few yards, their gaze met. The smile of recognition on the older man's face solidifying into something else as his eyes fell on Will. The fear that a ghost was sitting there. He had seen it in the eyes of his father's relatives before. For a moment, he thought Pearce was about to turn and run. But he could see that the man still had his pride. And in that moment, all of Will's fear and trepidation left him. He had nothing to fear, nothing to explain. So he got to his feet and looked Harry Pearce in the eye, holding his gaze with growing confidence as he extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Sir Harry," he said.

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**Thanks again for reading, reviews would be welcome if you have a minute. Thank you.**


	4. Love Will Tear Us Apart

**Thank you to everyone who has read this story, and especially to those who took time to review. Thank you. Joy Division's  
**

**The title of this chapter, and the song referenced in Ruth's opening segment, is Joy Division's "Love Will Tear us Apart" (written by Ian Curtis). No copyright infringement intended.**

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**Chapter Four: Love Will Tear us Apart  
**

Ruth could see it coming a mile away. A light at the end of a long, dark tunnel: the light of an oncoming, speeding train set to smash Harry to bits. That was the most frightening thing: waiting for the collision to begin. Even in her dreams she could see it speeding closer, feel the rush of oxygen being sucked from the tunnel and hear the screaming of the pistons getting louder, louder, louder. All the while, he's standing on the tracks; his fingers jammed in his ears and singing at the top of his voice: "lalalala…can't hear you!" He's hearing perfectly well, but she just can't make him listen as she's shouting from the side lines. She's never even seen a picture of Bill Crombie, but she's fairly sure it's him driving the train.

It was frustrating. Frustration that found a vent on the very thing that caused it in the first place: Harry himself. She could feel them both spiralling downwards, spinning and freefalling. After everything they had been through, after everything they survived together, it would be a long buried ghost from the ancient past that drove them apart. The absurdity of it made her even more desperate to pull him back from the edge; desperation resulting in haste, leading to crossed wires and misunderstandings.

Once she watched him deal with death after death, and wondered whether he had any feelings at all. She could recall the disgust she felt at Danny Hunter's funeral; of how Harry passively absorbed the brutal, violent deaths picking off his team one by one. But she could see it now; she could see where all that raw grief and desperate self-loathing was going now. It was being funnelled down deep into his own self; locked away in some internalised silage tank that had been threatening to overflow for years. It was past that now. Now, it was boiling over and slowly building in volatile momentum, a volcanic explosion of molten trauma just waiting to happen.

Even when he was raging at her, she could see the pleading in his eyes. Sometimes a plaintive undertone, saying one thing and meaning another. She thought she knew him. She thought him simple and straightforward to a fault. Now the blistering layers of skin were being peeled back, exposing the raw, fragility that lay beneath. Broken and tender; red and weeping. His vulnerabilities laid bare, he was fighting to get back control by lashing out at her. Was this what Jane had to put up with? Was this what killed them? If Ruth looked backwards, could she see where they were going? To the place where Harry was taking her.

There in the bathroom, she splashed cold water over her face and looked at her reflection in the mirror. The harsh halogen lights made her skin look paler; like she died last week and hadn't the wit to stiffen. She knew the face of the woman looking back at her: her own vulnerabilities and insecurities were etched in the lines around her pale, blue eyes. Reflected back at her was a person of substantial intellect, but little emotional wit. Codes she can break; computers she can hack. Languages she can decipher by the score. But treading the emotional mine field of a traumatised man was something different. Its lack of parameters, its lack of rules and absence of algorithms, all meant she had to rely on her own nebulous grasp of human emotions.

'_I will not run,'_ she told herself. _'I will not run away.'_

She had been running all her life, now she had to stay and weather the storm. Waiting for the rupture was the worst part. Just the endless waiting and watching as the man she loved continued the descent into his own private hell. But for the time being, she descended nowhere except to their bedroom, where the radio played an old song. The familiar notes resonating deep in her consciousness as she sank onto the mattress and closed her eyes.

'_You cry out in your sleep; all my failings exposed. There's a taste in my mouth; as desperation takes hold…'_

The song played on as she slipped into a much needed afternoon nap. _'And love,' _she continued in her head. _'Love will tear us apart, again…'_

* * *

Harry's hand closed around Catherine's upper-arm as swift as a bear trap, before hauling her back outside. Impervious to the shocked glances of onlookers, as well his daughter's own startled gasp, as he hauled her out the door. Outside, passers-by veered off-course to avoid their public domestic, equally ignored by Harry as he bitterly rounded on her: "Did Ruth put you up to this?"

Catherine's breath hitched in her throat as she gaped back at him, genuinely clueless as to what he was talking about.

"Dad, you're hurting me!" she declared, before wrenching her shoulder free of his grip. "What is wrong with you?"

Away from that apparition in the restaurant, his heartbeat began to calm. But his hands continued to tremble as he ran them through his thinning hair. The fright of seeing him there, out of the blue, had made him feel physically sick. At first, he had closed his eyes, thinking his mind was playing a cruel trick on him again. But when he opened them again, there he was. As real and solid as the day itself. Belatedly, he tried to pull himself together and wipe the surge of memories from his mind. Aware that he was becoming the centre of attention, he took a nervous step back, putting some distance between himself and Catherine and drew a deep breath.

"Ruth!" he stammered, again. When he looked back at Catherine, she returned his gaze with a mix of fear and loathing that was a kick in the gut to behold. _'He's just a bully!' _The memory of that conversation she had with Danny Hunter, all those years ago, reared up his mind. He was that bully, once more. Once again, he had to fight to get hold of senses.

"Cate, you don't know what you've done, I'm not angry with you," he said, closing the gap between them again. "But Ruth put you up to this, didn't she? She told you to bring him here-"

"Dad, no," she was shaking her head as she cut over him. "You've got this all wrong."

His breathing was laboured as he froze, reading her expression. The fear and loathing soon melted into worry. The same deep green eyes as his looked back at him, wide and scared as the bully devolved into a quivering mess before her.

"I'm sorry," he said, quietly.

Her hands found his, gripping them for reassurance. "I've only spoken to Ruth once, Dad. At the wedding," she explained, guiding him over to nearby table. "Actually, it was Mum who put me up to it."

Harry's whole body seemed to jolt as he absorbed the impact of that with as much grace as he could muster.

"Jane?" he asked, dumbly.

Catherine nodded. "Will tracked her down and she agreed to meet him back at the house. She knew she wouldn't be able to get in touch with you so, well you can guess the rest."

After the initial shock of Jane being brought back into the picture, he frantically cast around for a clue as to what she could have told William Crombie. Nothing. He was sure it was nothing. His fury at Ruth subsided, giving way to confusion at Jane – the woman who owed him the least of anyone. Meanwhile, a tense silence developed between Catherine and him. But all the while, she scrutinised him closely, on the lookout for the next explosion, no doubt.

"He seems really nice, Dad," she said, plaintively. "He only wants to ask a few questions about his own Dad. Apparently, you two knew each other."

Even Catherine had no idea of the storm she had walked into. But why would she know? She hadn't even been born in 1978.

"You don't understand," he began, gathering his thoughts. "I can't-"

"If something awful happened to you before I was even born, I would do what he's doing now," she cut over him, again. "Won't you hear him out?"

It was a confession he found strangely touching. "Would you really?"

"Of course!" she replied, without hesitation. "Because what we don't know destroys us. Even though you were never there, I always knew you were an emotionally inept arsehole who destroyed everything he held dear. But at least I knew that. If I didn't, the wondering would drive me to distraction."

He let go of her hands as if she had burned him. "Jesus, Catherine, is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"No," she admitted. "It's supposed to make you see things from Will's perspective."

Harry regarded his daughter carefully for a moment, weighing her up again. "Don't ever grow too smug: you're more like me than you or anyone else realises."

She shrugged. "Probably. But at least being on the receiving end of someone like yourself may make you realise how you come across to others, for a change."

They settled into another silence. But, at least on this occasion, she had succeeded in talking him down from his high emotional panic at being confronted with Will Crombie. Unconsciously, Harry's eye drifted over to the door of the restaurant, where they had left him standing by the table, confused and alone. It had only been a few minutes, ten at most, so Harry afforded himself more time to settle. Pride alone prevented him from simply making a run for it. Pride, and his own daughter.

"I don't know what happened between you and Will's Dad, and I know better than to ask," she said, earnestly. "But won't you talk to Will?"

Harry didn't reply straight away. He dropped his gaze to the rough surface of the table, tracing over the grain of the wood with his thumb nail without really seeing it. Slow, thoughtless movements that tricked his brain out of relapsing down memory lane, again. Meanwhile, all around him, life inside Hyde Park began to ebb away as the day grew older. The early summer sun cast long shadows as its warmth receded into dusk. Catherine's hand, still so much smaller than his own, reached out and covered his own, stilling it; holding it in place. They didn't have much time. But, as Ruth always said, they never did have enough time. They'd have to go elsewhere.

Still he did not answer. When first he walked through those doors, he couldn't see Bill's son. He only saw Bill. Bill laid out on the mortuary slab; the Priest shifting in the shadows, his voice gently nudging at the silence as a litany of prayers were murmured. He could still smell the burned flesh – like roasting pork. Flesh torn by butcher's hooks, tendons and nerves coiled and exposed through lacerated skin. Blackened bones pushed through the surface, ribs cracked and scorched like a barbeque in a colony of cannibals. Inside, he pulled away before he could go into an emotional freefall again, latching on to the first thing that popped up in his head that wasn't Bill's charred corpse.

Juliet. Juliet's enormous shoulder pads, suffocating him as he buried his face in the crook of her throat. 'It's okay, Harry,' she whispered in his ear, easing him gently into her bed. 'It's all going to be okay,' she repeated, but she sounded bored. Her eyes sharp and piercing under a dark, loose fringe. She looked like she might eat him. But he needed her. He needed her arms around him, to be held by her. He sees the shoulder pads, soaked through with his tears.

"Dad!"

Catherine's voice jolted him out of his reverie, chasing the phantoms away. For a moment, he had entirely forgotten she was still there.

"Dad, you were miles away," she said.

He didn't know what his face was doing, but whatever it was it was making her almost afraid again. It was as if the full enormity of what was happening was taking shape before her very eyes, dark and unfathomable, but there all the same. She knew when to give up.

"Look," she continued. "I'll make some excuse. I'll tell Will you're sick, or something."

That stubborn pride stirred deep inside him, a refusal to run any further. But before he could answer, another voice sounded over his own:

"I've heard all the excuses in the world, one more won't make a difference."

There was no anger in Will's tone, just a weary resignation. He was standing beside the door to the Serpentine Kitchen Bar, leaning almost casually against the wall. From where he regarded the scene before him through his father's dark grey eyes, his expression distant. Harry couldn't even guess at how long he had been there, watching them. But it can't have been long, he surmised. Opposite Harry, Catherine looked almost abashed at having been overheard. She got to her feet, looking towards the younger man.

"Will, I'm sorry, I-"

"Catherine, no!" Harry cut over her this time, but he kept his eye on Will as he spoke. The sight of him made his blood run cold, made the hairs at the back of his neck prickle. But he got up and stood his ground against his own fears. "Come with me, both of you."

Nothing more was said as he stepped away from the table and set off towards the exit of the park.

* * *

"Hey, Harry, I've been meaning to show you this!" Bill sounded excited as he rifled through his wallet. First, he slid out a small picture of his wife, Deborah. An unfortunate crease marked her features, cutting her face in half. But underneath that was another picture, a black fuzz Harry couldn't make out.

Outside the car, all was in darkness but for the light of the moon. The docklands were ill-lit, even the back seat of their vehicle was completely invisible as it fell in the shadow of a giant concrete pillar. It all conspired to hide the content of the picture from Harry's sight. Until Bill had the foresight to flick on the interior light, but even that made no difference.

"I give up. What is it?" he asked, tilting the small scrap of paper to the light.

"_It_," he repeated, scandalised. "That's a fine way to talk about your future godchild!"

Although he still couldn't make head nor tail of what he was actually looking at, Harry beamed all the same. Meanwhile, Bill reach over him and pointed to a white blob attached to a curved white line that curled around the bottom of the image.

"That's the head and that's the spine," he pointed out, his voice soft and distant. "If you look hard, you can see little legs and an arm. I think he's sucking his thumb."

To Bill, this wasn't just an indistinct, blurry grey splurge. It was his child. His firstborn. Harry cradled the image in the palms of his hands as if it had already been born. It would be his turn next, he was sure of that despite everything Jane was going through. He would be the one showing people a picture of static and insisting he could make out legs and toes, see flesh knitting over bone as new life blossomed and swelled, fattening with promise.

"It's beautiful," replied Harry, after a long pause.

As he went to hand it back, Bill started rummaging for his cigarettes in the glove compartment. They were only found after everything else in there had been scooped onto the floor, then the search was on for a lighter which was eventually located somewhere near Bill's foot pedals in the driver's seat. A yellow light briefly flared inside the vehicle, up-lighting his face as he sucked on the cigarette. After a deep inhale, he blew out a steady stream of acrid smoke with a pensive expression on his face.

"She's been looking in the weird names book again," he said, darkly. "This week, it's Tarquin for a boy-"

He was cut off by Harry's snort of laughter. "As in 'Tarquin the Otter'?"

Bill held up his free hand, palm towards Harry. "Now stop there, Mister Know-it-All," he commanded. "That's what I said and apparently, it's Tarka the Otter, so that makes it okay. But I said to her, no kid of mine is ever going to called Tarquin, Otter or no. Bloody Tarquin, I ask you. Last week, it was Crispin. Blandine for a girl. Bloody Blandine!"

"Bloody Blandine has quite a nice ring to it, if you ask me," said Harry, stifling his own laughter for long enough.

Just then, headlamps pierced the darkness outside. Twin beams of light swinging over the stony, abandoned ground of the docklands. Distant harbour lights twinkled way up north, towards Clarendon Docks, where he and Bill had got off the boat from Liverpool not two nights ago. But that was a long way from where they were now. Harry watched the other car with a frown furrowing his brow.

"Here's our man," said Bill, sitting up straight in his seat again. "Let's see if he's got anything else for us."

He wound down the window and flicked his cigarette butt outside. Harry watched it bounce in a shower of sparks before extinguishing in a nearby puddle. They both got out just as the other vehicle came to a halt in a crunch of loose gravel. He could not make out the lone driver, but Harry already knew it was the same man they spoke with briefly at the bonfire party the night before. He got out, greeting them with a wave to acknowledge their presence.

"All right, Brendan. Back on safer ground are we?" asked Bill.

Brendan did look somewhat more approachable without a scarf and low hood obscuring his face.

"Aye, thank fuck," he replied, breathing a sigh of relief. "And thank fuck all that's over for another year."

He was referring to the July Twelfth parades that had been taking place all over Northern Ireland that day. It was the reason they were meeting so late at night: passing through the city had been impossible with the huge crowds lining every major road and the marchers and bandsmen blocking every route. The noise they made was enough to make the earth vibrate. An endless beating of huge drums, all across the province. He and Bill had watched them, for curiosity's sake alone, from an embankment in south Belfast, at the bottom of the Lisburn road. They had both come away sporting threatening headaches.

"Don't they do it again in August?" asked Bill, quizzically.

He had become genuinely interested in how things worked in Northern Ireland. Where Harry was dismissive and begrudging, Bill was going to pains to understand what it was that drove these two communities apart.

Brendan shrugged. "Aye, but nothing on that scale. Still a pain in the arse, mind."

The last Saturday in August. Black Saturday, they called it.

Together, the three of them walked towards the edge of Belfast Lough. To where the waters lapped at a dirty shoreline leading all the way up to Carrickfergus in the far north. Between them and there, however, the lights of Belfast city twinkled suggestively. For the time being, Harry was content to let Bill lead the meet up.

"So, you were mentioning this meeting at the Felon's Club on the Falls Road?"

"That's right. Do you have the devices for me?"

They did. Harry had seen to it that they were loaded into the boot of the car before they left their safe house. The finest techies in the British Army and MI5 had been working on them. One of the MI5 Spooks over in London, a droll Welshman, had held forth at tedious length about the device's capabilities, every word of it passing over Harry's head. But, the Welshman said they were the best, and Harry was happy to go along with that.

"They're in the boot of the car," said Bill, jerking his head back the way they had come. "Harry, I believe, has the instructions."

He felt himself burning red. "Actually," he admitted. "You may have to give that bloke back at Gower Street a call again, Bill."

Both Bill and Brendan looked at him incredulously.

"You'll have to do it, Harry," said Bill. "I'm about to become a father. I can't afford to lapse into a coma now."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'll do it. Who do I ask for again?"

"Malcolm Wynne-Jones," he replied, as Harry committed the name to memory.

Their Asset looked almost sheepish. "Look, give them to me and I'll see if I can't get them installed on my own. There's over a month to go, so it's not like we're in a hurry."

Bill shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

Harry, however, had his reservations. "I think they should be in there as soon as possible. We still need to listen in, to whatever's happening in there."

"It's only a pub, isn't it?" Bill asked their asset.

Brendan shook his head. "There's an office upstairs where the West Belfast IRA meet all the time. It's only at the end of August that the whole Army Council will be meeting, though. That's the one you really need. Your colleague's probably right, though. The sooner the better. Just give them to me, and I'll see what I can do."

Harry considered what he was saying with grave misgivings. But, there was no way either he, Bill nor any other Brit was going to get near the Felon's Club. Even the best of fake accents would be picked up by the patrons and other's had died in the process before now. They had no other choice, if they were to listen in on that meeting. "Fine," they both concurred, in tandem.

There were some things they simply had no control over.

* * *

Will was content to let father and daughter lead the way, out of Hyde Park. The small distance gave him some breathing space, a chance to gather his thoughts and decide what it was he was going to ask and say. But even that made him feel as though he was getting ahead of himself. All through his life he had been drip fed information about his father's death. From the earliest "Daddy's gone to live with Jesus" explanation he was given as a small boy, to the more direct "shot by the IRA" of his adulthood and everything in between: it all gave the impression of having been lied to. Lies spoken with the best of intentions, no doubt. But lies all the same.

Even the gentlest of explanations felt like a rejection. Daddy shouldn't be living with Jesus; Jesus can fuck off and find his own Daddy. His Daddy should be with him and Mammy. His father chose to be with Jesus just before he was born, meaning in his childish mind that it was his own imminent arrival in Bill Crombie's life that prompted that last minute relocation to heaven. Did the guilt ever go away? He would shake his head and admonish himself, tell himself to wise up. But, somehow, that connection was made: his father's death – his birth. It was as though one had paid for the other, like life was a balance sheet.

He watched Catherine and her father, Sir Harry Pearce himself, walking slightly ahead of him and stopped in his tracks. Neither noticed and just carried on walking. But Will remained where he was, just observing them. They walked some distance apart, but perfectly in step with each other. Catherine had her arms wrapped around her middle, while Sir Harry kept veering to the left. There was little by way of physical closeness between them; they didn't even speak. Would his father have been like that with him? Will could only wonder. But he had seen the look on Harry's face back then, and it hadn't been pretty. As he had all his life, he had tried to read into that expression and extrapolate what it told him of his father's death. Now, he had to stop doing that, or he'd end up as jittery as the man escorting him to god knows where.

Eventually, they reached Catherine's car. Without a word spoken, all three of them got inside and she started up the engine. Only then did Sir Harry start issuing directions. Evidently, they were looking for somewhere quieter. But in the end, the journey was not a long one. Catherine slowed down at Milbank, near the river and Harry tersely informed them this was their stop. She turned in her seat and wished him luck.

"Call me," she added. "I gave you my number."

Will felt only gratitude towards her. "I will, thank you."

Outside on the pavement, the two of them stood facing each other. Sir Harry was almost unrecognisable from the photo on his mother's dresser. Older, careworn, larger. He wore on his face the hangdog expression of the man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. On the opposite side of the road, Thames House loomed large. Will noted the building, suspecting that Sir Harry had brought him somewhere familiar to him as some sort of pale comfort. Either way, they stuck to the riverside as Harry walked slowly along the railings. The river bubbled past them, dirty and dark in the fading light of day.

"Why are you here?" asked Harry. "Why now?"

Will had expected this. "Because now my mother's dead," he began.

He paused as Harry looked directly at him for the first time since they met. An unmistakable flicker of sadness passed across the man's face, his green eyes misting over. At least he offered no empty platitudes.

"When?"

"A couple of months ago now," he answered. "She'd had cancer. I was clearing her house out to be sold and found this picture."

He broke off again as he rummaged in the inside pocket of his jacket. When he found the picture of the picnic, he handed it over. Harry looked at it closely, gaze raking over the faces frozen in time. His younger self, his ex-wife and dead friends.

"July, 1978. Back there in Hyde Park," said Harry, returning the picture. "We left for Belfast on the tenth."

"And there he died?"

He already knew the answer, but he no longer trusted his own knowledge of events.

"There he died," Harry confirmed. "What did they tell you?"

Will raised a pained smile. "That Daddy had gone to live with Jesus," he answered, and left it at that. "At least, until November, when someone else told me you killed him."

"Who?"

Will shrugged. "I don't know. Some Irish guy called at my ex-girlfriend's house, not knowing I was just about moving out. It was a Saturday night. I would have been out anyway."

"November?"

Will nodded. "November. We decided it was a hoax, so she burned it. I guess I should have kept it, to show you."

"Do you believe it?"

"I don't know what to believe," he replied. "You tell me."

Harry stopped walking again and turned to look at him. Being of a similar height, their eyes met.

"I didn't kill your father and I don't know who did," he answered, earnestly. "A peculiar Irishman turned up at the homes of myself and several of my Officers back in November. All in the same night. All being drawn into a trap. I think it's fair to say you were also victim to that."

Will shivered, wrapping his jacket tighter around his middle. "Who was it? Will he be back?"

"He's dead now," Harry replied, matter of factly. It did little to soothe Will's worries. "That's a whole other story, William. One you need not burden yourself with."

They passed Thames House and carried on walking. But as they went, Harry glanced over at the building, almost longingly.

"My mother got a letter not long after she died," Will explained. "She was invited to some Peace and Reconciliation thing, chaired by Desmond Tutu and Robin Eames. They wanted her to tell her story, about how Dad was killed. I want to go instead of her. Only there's nothing I can say, because I just don't know, Sir Harry. Only you know."

As he spoke, he could see the other man shrinking almost within himself. He could no longer look at Will and he veered off, towards the barrier. But Will pressed his point.

"You know the thing I'm talking about, don't you?" he asked, growing more hasty. "You know about this committee. Have they called you up, too?"

Harry stopped in his tracks again, rounding on him. "Go home, William. Go home and burn that letter. You don't need the truth about your father. No one needs knowledge like that."

He was about to turn away again, but Will reached out and stopped him. "You can't bring me this far and say that!" he retorted. "What knowledge? All I have is well intended bullshit and a headful of nightmares. All I want is the truth; is that so much to ask?"

Harry smoothly extricated himself from Will's grasp. "If you knew what you were asking-"

"That's the fucking point!" Will shot back. "I don't know. I don't know anything for certain and I'm long past being a child, Sir Harry. I'm a grown man now, I can handle the truth. I need the truth and if your reaction was anything to go by, you need to tell it. Let's call it a business transaction."

Will stopped himself before he could grow even more shrill. But the outburst had left him angry and breathless. All he needed were the facts. A simple walk-through of events and all the shrugging offs and soft-lipped lies were only pulling him deeper in. Firmly entrenched, he now stood his ground against his last chance of finding out what really happened.

In return, Harry fixed him with a hard, searching look. Will could feel himself being silently assessed, but he was long past the point of caring what the other man made of him. Harry could take him as he found him. After what seemed an age, however, the old Spook stepped closer to him; they were almost nose to nose. Tension thickened as they each stared the other out, but Will resolved himself to not blink first. Defiance gave chase to the tension he felt swelling between them.

"You will regret this for the rest of your life," said Harry.

Will's lip curled into a half-smile. "Not half as much as I would if I just let you walk away without saying a word."

His ongoing defiance caused a flare of anger in Harry. Will could see it in his expression, but he used it to merely bolster his own stubborn persistence.

"This is for your own good, William. Walk away now," Harry said.

William's temper finally boiled over. "Oh! For fuck's sake!" he stormed, pulling away from Harry. "I am not made of glass; this will not break me-"

"But it might break me!" Harry retorted, anger flashing in his eyes. "You weren't there; you didn't see it. I did. And if you knew the things I've been carrying around inside my head since that day, you wouldn't be here now."

Will did not reply immediately. He drew back a little, fixing Harry with a disdainful eye. "If I knew that, I wouldn't need to be here now. You're deeply self-defeating, aren't you?"

Harry bit down on whatever retort he had lined up, and instead turned his back on Will.

"I didn't think you were a murderer, Sir Harry. But nor did I think you were a coward, either. Guess I was wrong after all," he called out, addressing the Spook's retreating back.

He didn't retreat for long, however. Sir Harry whirled round and was back bearing down on Will in a cold fury. For a brief moment, Will thought he had gone too far and that the other man would hit him. Harry's gloved hand clenched and unclenched, itching for the blow. But he caught himself on and held himself in check.

"You don't know the first thing about me, boy!" he spat. "You're green as green can be."

But Will laughed. "No, but I know one thing. You're like one of those murderers who refuses to tell the victim's parents where the bodies are because they enjoy having that hold over people's lives. You're just getting a thrill out of controlling my life and playing the fucking martyr, aren't you Sir-"

That did it. The blow caught his left cheek and sent him reeling backwards. But Will did not fall, he righted his position as soon as he was able and immediately returned to his place. Like a crazed Jack Russell coming back for more, even though it was up against a Pit Bull.

"I. Am. Not. A. Murderer," Harry hissed at him, low and annunciating each word carefully. "I am not a murdered and I am not playing the martyr, you insolent little whelp!"

Will drew a deep breath, exhaling slowly in an effort to calm himself. "Then what have you got to be scared of, Sir Harry? Just talk to me."

The tension and anger drained away. Both men faced each other, slumped in breathless defeat. Harry hunched over, anguished and ashamed with his hands on his knees. Will, red faced and sore from the slap, leaned back against a decorative streetlamp, exhausted and drained. His dark grey eyes catching the light, glittering as tears welled but went unshed. When Harry did raise his head to look at him, he had a resigned smile playing at his lips.

"You're every bit as stubborn and foolhardy as your father; I'll give you that, boy!" he said, a lilt of amusement suddenly in his tone.

Despite himself, Will also laughed. A weak, breathless gesture, but a laugh all the same, leaning his head back against the lamppost. "I'm thirty-three, Sir Harry. Please stop calling me 'boy'".

"Yeah, well, you'll have to forgive a sentimental old man, William. The last time I saw you, you were an indiscernible foetus on a piece of paper."

A shudder of horror went through him. "Urgh! You do realise that sounds infinitely more traumatic than anything that could have happened to my Dad, don't you?"

Harry straightened up again, prompting Will to do the same. Once more, they looked to each other, only now a little calmer. The older man pointed towards Thames House.

"You know where to find me," he said. "What do you do by way of work?"

"I'm self-employed. I can call in any time," he answered.

"Good," Harry replied. "Call in tomorrow at noon, report to reception. We can talk properly there and this time, I'll be prepared for you."

"For what it's worth, Sir Harry, I really didn't know Catherine hadn't told you about my being there today," he said, genuinely apologetic.

But Harry only raised a rueful smile. "What's done is done."

With that, they parted. Walking in opposite directions, going their own way. Although Harry had agreed to nothing in particular, Will still let himself soak up the small victory.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading; reviews would be welcome, if you have a minute. **


	5. In the Club

**Thank you to everyone who has read this story and especially to those who reviewed. Thank you.**

* * *

**Chapter Five: In the Club  
**

The house was as quiet as a crypt by the time Harry returned home. Cold, almost unnaturally so to the point of giving it an air of abandonment. Ruth's favourite mug was upturned on the draining board in the kitchen, a newspaper left open on the counter. Inside the oven were the cold cinders of his Sunday dinner, as signified by the terse note attached to the door of the fridge by a Magaluf fridge magnet. _Who did they know that had been to Magaluf?_ He made a mental note to have them neutralised as he flipped the plate of cinders into the bin. From there, he made his way into the living room, where the drinks cabinet held the promise of a whiskey and finally sat down by the gas fire.

Scarlet lay sleeping on the sofa; Ruth's cat curled up on the upholstered seat of a dining room chair. Neither animal noticed his arrival and both slept on untroubled by his dishevelled state. Ever since leaving Will by the embankment, he had been going over and over the issues they had discussed. It was a post-mortem that was intruded upon by some small part of his psyche asking a pertinent question: what was he more afraid of? Reliving the horrors of that day or being forced to face up to his own mistakes and cowardice?

If he did tell all, would it tear open the wound again? Or would it be the catharsis he desperately sought and craved? Perhaps you had to tear open the wound in order for it to heal properly, as well as for forever. Like Henry VIII's suppurating legs, the ulcer of Northern Ireland just kept on coming back for more, pushing him that little bit closer to the edge. Jane had surprised him. Had she sent Will to him knowing the effect it would have? Was that her final act of revenge? One last kick in the teeth to see him on his way.

Harry had been so lost in his own musings, the whiskey sat forgotten on the arm of his chair. The time was nearing half-one in the morning and exhaustion was pulling his mood down even lower. Unable to bear the resounding isolation any longer, he downed the whiskey in one and set off up the stairs. In the bedroom, Ruth was unsurprisingly asleep. He paused to check on her for only a brief moment before undressing. Despite his best efforts to crawl in beside her as discreetly as possible, she still rolled over and murmured softly as the mattress dipped.

"It's only me," he whispered back.

Her eyelids flickered open. "Where have you been?" she asked, voice hoarse. "I was worried sick."

"I'm sorry."

"We'll talk tomorrow," she promised, before turning her back on him.

Still half sitting up he watched her for a long moment, waiting to see if she would turn to face him again. But she didn't. Nor did she fall asleep again, he could just see her open eyes looking out into the darkness. In the hope that she would give some sign of noticing his need, he remained where he was, but she seemed determined to keep up the pretence of not having noticed.

Regnum Defende. Show no weakness. Mottoes he had followed his whole life; but where had those empty words got him now? He felt it all being cast to the wind in that one small moment.

"Hold me," he said.

Finally, she looked back at him. Confusion clouded her expression, as though he were speaking a foreign language. "What?"

"Hold me," he repeated, feeling almost ashamed. "I just want you to."

It destroyed him and Jane. History was repeating itself before his very eyes and his new mission was to stop it. Regnum Defende.

"For God's sake, Ruth. I need you now," he admitted.

Slowly, cautiously, she sat up and reached out towards him. But it was like she was petting a lion and she didn't know whether he'd curl up and purr, or tear her arm off. He met her halfway, leaning into her outstretched arms, resting his head beneath her chin.

"You need to sleep," she whispered in his ear. Despite her caution, she tightened her hold on him. But after a moment, she eased him downwards, holding him as he slipped into an uneasy slumber.

* * *

"Harry … Harry, wake up!"

Rough hands shook him from his deep sleep. He heaved his body over, flipping himself face down in the bank of pillows in an effort to throw the intruder off. But Bill was having none of it and immediately rolled him onto his back again. His vision was suddenly assaulted by a flare of bright light as the bedside lamp was switched on; a second assault was launched by a rush of cold air as the foot of the eiderdown was flipped up and the same rough hands as before gripped his ankles. Before Harry could formulate even the coarsest of responses, he was dragged bodily down the mattress. In a futile effort to fight back, he gripped the bedsheet, only succeeding in pulling it off with him.

"Jesus, Harry, I'd have an easier time waking the dead," Bill said, breathless from his exertions.

Harry was tipped off the foot of his bed, landing on the thinly carpeted floor with a muffled thump.

"Fuck off, Bill!" he groaned, waving the first hand he could disentangle from the nest of sheets he'd become cocooned in. That same free hand groped for the pillow he had dragged down with him, ready to try and get back to sleep. Whatever time it was, it wasn't any fit time to be conscious.

Bill had second guessed what was about to happen and snatched it clean away. "Harry, no. I need you to phone in a bomb scare."

Harry responded with a grimace. "You do it!" But then the request resounded in his head. The words 'bomb scare' and their meaning suddenly registered in his somnambulant mind and jerked him fully back into consciousness. "What?!" he snapped, trying to sit upright. "Where's the damn bomb?"

"It's right here," replied Bill, grinning almost demonically.

Harry watched in horror as Bill reached for a shoebox he had left on his bedside table. He nudged off the lid and tilted the box towards Harry's face, but he still had to get up to see it properly.

"Bill! What are you playing at?" he gasped, wide eyed as he looked from bomb to Bill and back again.

"Keep your hair on, Harry. It's a dud," he explained. "Look, the timer's counting down to a detonator on a great wad of window putty. We just need it to look real enough to the casual observer in case it really does get found."

Harry's heartrate slowly returned to its regular pace as he poked at the putty, leaving a perfect imprint of the pad of his index finger. He stepped clear of the tangle of bedsheets at his feet and cautiously took the device finding it reassuringly heavy.

"I still don't see where you're going with this," he said, looking back up at Bill.

The demonic smile was back in place. "I'm planting this outside the Felon's Club. You phone in the bomb scare and then meet me there. The whole area, including anyone left inside the Club itself will be evacuated, bomb disposal move in and give us perfect cover to get inside the Club and plant the bugs we need. We can't rely on Brendan alone to do this."

Harry frowned. "Don't you think we should plan this out first?"

"What's there to plan?" he countered. "Just give me an hour to get there, plant this thing and the Soldiers and the bomb disposal team will give us all the time we need. Once we're done, we'll tell them where it is and they can zap it to make it look real."

That was almost enough for Harry. There was just one more thing he needed clarified. "So, bomb disposal already know what we're doing? I don't want to be stuck inside the Felon's Club while they're detonating the place, controlled explosion or no."

"Of course they know," Bill was quick to assure him. "I've been working on this all night, while you've been sojourning through the land of the dead."

Harry drew a deep breath, steeling himself for the early start. "Sounds like the sort of thing we should have done from the start. But here, what code word am I giving and who I am saying is responsible? Not even the IRA would shit on their own doorstep."

"Ring the Samaritans; tell them you're UVF and give the code word 'Dragonfly'," replied Bill. "We need to make this look as real as possible."

With that, he took back his home made, fake bomb and made for the door. But he paused in the doorway, looking back at Harry with a look of utmost concern on his face. "You do realise you're naked, don't you?"

Harry sighed heavily. "What did you expect? Top hat and tails?"

"And nothing less, Harry. We're Officer Class, remember," he replied, by way of parting shot.

It was approaching dawn by the time Harry made it to the Falls Road, in West Belfast. Approaching from the North of the city, he had been held up at three different army checkpoints and had to swerve through narrow republican streets to avoid the IRA barricades, before finally making it onto the main Falls thoroughfare. It was a long, wide road stretching several miles, cutting through the outskirts of the city centre; lined with several heavily populated side streets. The Felon's Club was perilously close to the Royal Victoria Hospital, which they could not morally afford to have falling within the exclusion zone of their pretend device. Other streets, as well as the main road itself, had already been efficiently evacuated, with families ushered into the Clonard Monastery, nearby. Harry parked the car just beyond the RUC cordons at the foot of the Springfield Road and ducked under the tape after showing his ID to the policeman in charge. By now, army Saracens had formed a blockade across the Falls Road; Policemen formed up and ducked behind riot shields in case they came under attack. Close to the Hospital, the Divis Flats rose starkly against the pre-dawn gloom. Already deserted and awaiting demolition, they were the most likely source of any IRA counter-attack. But as Harry squinted through the poor light, he could just see the Land Rovers and military vehicles forming up around the old apartment blocks, already getting into a defensive position. Meanwhile, bomb disposal were unpacking their equipment, playing along with their charade. As always, no one spoke. Tension thickened the atmosphere as Harry pulled an army uniform on over his civvies, giving himself the appearance of a soldier on the off chance he was spotted by a hostile passer-by.

Ten minutes later, he was making his way up the Falls, flanked by heavily armed soldiers with their weapons at the ready. The Felon's Club was nearby, in darkness but with the tricolour and starry plough flags visible from the outside. A whitewashed, three storey building, it was accessible only by a caged side door and a steel shuttered staff entrance round the back. Harry paused outside, looking for Bill. The fake device was left by the caged door, a door that could only be opened by staff inside the pub.

"The only way in is the windows."

Bill startled Harry, almost causing him to jump out of his skin. "Stop creeping up on me!" he scolded.

Bill let out a high whistle. "Yes, Ma'am!"

He stepped around Harry, leaving him on the pavement. He stooped to the ground, picking something up. A few seconds later, glass smashed and the front window of the Felon's Club sprinkled all over the paving stones.

"We'll have to tell everyone it was put out by the controlled explosion," he said, over his shoulder. "Now, are you coming in or not? And bring that bag with you."

Harry wasn't about to miss this for the world. He lifted the bag with their devices in and cleared the distance between them in one bound. Quickly, he followed bill in through the broken window, carefully avoiding the jagged glass still stuck in the frame. There was an upholstered bench lining the wall, providing a soft landing for them as they dropped down the other side. Tables had wooden chairs stacked on top of them where the cleaners had mopped the floor before locking up for the night.

"Bill, the floor," said Harry, stopping his friend from stepping down off the wall bench. "A controlled explosion won't explain dirty footprints all over their lovely, tiled floor."

"Right enough," replied Bill.

Both perched on the narrow seat, they removed their dirty boots and socks, even rolling the cuffs of their trousers up to avoid leaving any form of trial through the building. Barefoot, they padded silently across the floor of the barroom, the cold tiles making Harry shiver. The only source of light was from lamps behind the optics, just enough for them to make out the interior of the IRA's watering hole of choice. The sight of a cut-out newspaper article about the murder of nine British Army soldiers, pinned to a notice board, made Harry's mouth run dry. Beside it was a mock score sheet: _'British Army: Nil. IRA: 9'_

"Bastards," Harry murmured under his breath.

"Don't let it get to you," Bill gently chided him.

"I don't know how you can be so calm, sometimes," Harry retorted, passing the offending notice board. "They're fucking disgusting."

They reached a stairwell behind the bar, leading to the second floor. From a landing window into the bar, they could see it was only a pool room. Giving it up, they moved on to the third floor, marked enticingly as "Private: Staff Only." Bill picked the lock with a device withdrawn from his back pocket, one quick turn and the lock clicked open. Inside, they a large function room with a long wooden table down the middle. Matching chairs were lined either side of it; an empty glass jug and several tumblers all situated in the middle. Used ashtrays were dotted at intervals on either side, but had not been cleaned.

"Not even the cleaning staff are allowed in here," Bill noted. "It's much dirtier than downstairs."

Harry glanced to the edge of the room, where there was another locked door. "There's the office," he said, giving it a nod.

All along the dark, wood panelled walls, were black and white photographic portraits of Republican leaders: Michael Collins, Eamon De Valera, Patrick Pearse and James Connolly among them. The Irish tricolour, immaculately pressed, was tacked to the far left wall, alongside a Starry Plough more normally associated with the INLA. Overhead, mock chandeliers reminiscent of down trodden night clubs in Blackpool, hung from the high ceiling.

"We'll tap this phone first, I think," said Bill.

At first, Harry hadn't noticed it. But there was a large, black phone at the far end of the table. If this was where the IRA Army Council were holding their meetings, it would have to be done.

"We should call Gower Street first," Harry said. "We may need help from our developer."

"He won't be there at this hour," replied Bill. "I think we may just have to wing it ourselves."

Unwilling to risk it, Harry went with his gut feeling and called the office. He found himself redirected to the home of Malcolm Wynne-Jones, who answered the call sounding half asleep, but not in the least bit annoyed. He relayed instructions Harry had a feeling he kept only in his head, committed to memory. First, the office phone after Bill picked the locks, then other devices planted discreetly about the room. They found one Brendan had already planted and activated, but Harry knew more wouldn't hurt. Despite the ruse to get them inside the club, they had to work fast and efficiently, giving them an hour to two hours at most.

"Bill, we can't afford the risk of have them redial the last number," said Harry, as he hung up the phone. "Give me another number to call, throw them off the scent."

"1194," he replied, from inside the office. "It's the Australian speaking clock. Leave the phone off the hook, too."

Harry smirked as he dialled the number, then placed the receiver carefully so that it wasn't quite back in place. It would look like the explosion knocked it and, with luck, whoever came in would replace the receiver properly without even noticing the call they had made. By the time they were done, there were even listening devices slipped into the wall cavities, as well as behind the portraits and under a loose floorboard. Every inch of the office and function room was covered; every pin drop and soft-footed mouse would resound down to them, listening from the top of the Divis Flats.

"Happy days," said Bill, casting an admiring glance around the room before they left.

"Indeed," Harry agreed.

They returned to Harry's car, parked close to Springfield Road. As he reached in his pockets for the keys, Harry turned back the way they came. A minute ticked by, just as the muffled crump of the controlled detonation rang through the empty, echoing streets of West Belfast.

* * *

Will hesitated before entering Thames House. Could people just walk in off the streets? He went to turn around again, to rejoin the flock of lunchtime office working flocking through the streets of Milbank, but succeeded only in running headlong into Catherine just as she was entering. Colliding off each other, Will hastily threw out both arms to catch her fall. She steadied herself by lurching forward against his chest.

"I'm such a klutz, I am so sorry," he stammered, rushed.

The silver slide that was clipping the front of her hair out of her face had come loose, snagged on the button of his breast pocket. Now, she hand long strands of blonde hair falling in her eyes. He almost reached out to brush them aside in an attempt to compensate for ploughing into her, before having second thoughts about the forwardness of it.

"Oh, it's okay," she quickly replied, her alarm giving way to amusement. "I wasn't looking where I was going either."

"You're here to see your Dad, I take it?" he asked, even though it was blindingly obvious.

She righted the shoulder strap of her bag, another casualty in the collision. "Yeah, and I was kind of hoping to bump into you actually."

Intrigued, he forgot his earlier caution about walking straight into Thames House and held the door open for her. "Really? Is there something I can help you with?"

As she ducked under his door holding arm, she flashed him an apologetic look. "Yes, I rather think there is. You know I lured Dad into a trap by getting him to meet me yesterday, without telling him about you. Well, I thought I'd even it out by crashing your meeting with Dad and not telling him I'm coming. I'll make myself scarce when it gets personal, naturally. But if you don't mind, I'd like to see him before you two disappear together."

Will laughed. "Fair's fair!" he replied, following her into the reception. Despite the lightness of her tone, he detect a note of genuine worry unpinning her intentions. "I'll report to reception now and you can go hide behind one of those pillars. Pity you didn't bring a big cake to jump out of, or something. Marilyn Monroe style."

"Hey, maybe next time!" she replied, grinning.

Once inside, he reported to reception as Harry had requested of him the day before. While he waited, he joined Catherine in loitering uncomfortably by the main entrance. It was growing increasingly warm outside, so at least they were both grateful for the cool interior of MI5's HQ. Meanwhile, Catherine was looking at him curiously.

"Why were you running away?" she asked, brow furrowing. "You're not scared of my Dad, are you?"

"No, not at all," he replied. "I was just scared of walking through the wrong door and being wrestled to the ground by a bunch of Spy Goons before being bundled off to Guantanamo Bay, or something."

Catherine lurched forwards as she stifled her laughter. "Don't say that too loudly, you might just give them ideas," she said, regaining her composure. "Seriously, though. You're okay to come in here. Just don't try and go through those doors, over there."

She pointed across the wide reception area, to a set of wooden double doors. It looked like the entrance to a janitor's store cupboard.

"On the other side of those doors is The Grid," she added, her tone hushed. "That's where all the spy stuff goes on. That's where you'll be measured up for your new orange jumpsuit, should you try your luck."

The doors opened while they were watching them. Harry Pearce, looking completely different in a sharp, tailored suit and neatly trimmed hair, stepped out into reception. He spotted Will immediately, but he beamed from ear to ear as his gaze fell on his daughter. They hugged briefly and kissed each other on both cheeks, before Harry pulled away and shook Will's hand.

"Nice to see you again, Will," Harry greeted him. Then, he turned to Catherine. "And a wonderful surprise to see you, Cate."

Will was about to step away, allowing them some father and daughter time. But before he could retreat, Harry's hand gripped his elbow, tugging him back. "This won't take long," he said. "Catherine, wait here and I'll be back in five minutes. Will, follow me."

Sir Harry led Will back out onto the street, where the workers on lunch release were only just beginning to thin out. Over the road was where they had their confrontation, the previous night. A memory Will tried to push out of his mind as he followed the Spook down the road, round the side of the building and into an empty side street near the roundabout. A large set of bins lined the rear wall of Thames House, rusty iron gates formed a barrier between the alley and the car park. But it was there Harry and Will came to a halt, the older man risking his Saville Row suit by leaning against the rough concrete perimeter wall. For a long time, an uncomfortably long time, Harry weighed him up.

"So this meeting tomorrow: are you still intent on going?" asked Harry.

Will took a moment to assess what answer Harry wanted him to give. But the older man's expression was unreadable. In the end, it did not matter. Will was not about to change his mind to please anyone.

"Yes," he replied, firmly.

Sir Harry looked him dead in the eye. If Will wasn't so resolute, the look would have made him nervous.

"Very well then," replied Harry. "I'll see you there at ten."

His breath caught in his throat. "You mean it?" he asked, startled. "The truth? The whole truth?"

"And nothing but the truth," Harry replied, completing the old adage.

Will smiled, despite his best efforts not to. "Thank you," he replied, feeling lame. "I appreciate it."

"I know," Harry replied. "There's just one more thing. I want you to be certain."

"I am. I've been ready for years, Sir Harry."

Harry nodded, looking more resigned than relieved. "Then be at the Guildhall for ten. We can talk there. I don't know who the intermediary is, but I know she's a genocide survivor from Rwanda. At least nothing will shock her."

Will couldn't resist an abashed chuckle at the dark humour in the other man. "Well, that's something."

"My wife, Ruth, will be joining me there, too. But she will be listening in from the relative's room, rather than in with us. Is there anyone accompanying you?"

Will hadn't thought to ask whether he could bring someone along for support. But, he did not want to burden Harry with a feeling of being obliged to find someone.

"No," he shook his head. "I decided it would be for the best if only I heard it."

Harry shrugged. "Fair enough. Well, I'll see you there."

Will nodded as Harry brushed past him, heading back towards the entrance of Thames House. But he remained where he was, gathering his thoughts and catching his breath. Finally, he had the end in his sights.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading; reviews would be lovely if you have a minute.**


	6. The Trap

**Thank you to everyone who has read this story and especially to those who have reviewed. Thank you!**

* * *

**Chapter Six: The Trap**

Tuesday morning dawned amidst the first rays of summer, bright and still fresh. Life reawakening from the doldrums of the bleak English winter. The season's first butterfly twitched its powder blue wings among Ruth's window boxes on the external window ledge. Harry's gaze tracked its jagged progress as it flitted from petal to petal, weightless and beautiful on the flow of the breeze. Once, while he was serving in Belfast, an old woman with a bent back and cataracts told him butterflies were the souls of the dead, waiting to pass through Purgatory. That's why you shouldn't kill them, she said to the soldier with the big gun nestled like a new born in his arms.

Meanwhile, as their breakfast commenced, Ruth tiptoed around him as though he were a human land mine. He looked up from his newspaper and watched as she buttered her toast so slowly as to not make a sound, and felt his brow furrow into a deep frown. Would she try to stop her own heat next, just in case the endless beating set his temper off? Had he really been that bad? After a few seconds, she noticed him looking and stopped what she was doing.

"Are you all right?" she asked, her eyes meeting his. _'Are you about to blow your top,'_ is what she meant.

Somewhat askance, he replied: "Of course. Are you?"

"Yeah, fine," she replied, augmenting her fineness with a jerky nod.

He tried to return to the newspaper, but found his focus had been terminally disrupted. After checking to see if the butterfly was still doing its thing to the window box – and finding it gone – he returned his attention to Ruth. More than anything, he wished that she would say something. Anything. She had never been short of words before. Instead, it was left to him to pluck at a random memory, one that belly flopped back into his consciousness during the night as he revisited it in his nightmares.

"Once, I was on foot patrol in Derry-Stroke-Londonderry," he began, causing her to jump. "We used to patrol this place called the Bogside, a most fitting name. Anyway, it had all these Republican council estates and the soldiers all hated the place – we were coming under constant attack. I remember, I was just walking down the street and I was passed by kids from the Christian Brothers School, they were no older than twelve or so. As I passed, they all fell silent and serious, all huddled together. I thought they were terrified; I was a fully armed soldier after all. But as soon as they got a few feet away, they set off a load of fire crackers. I almost shot the little fuckers."

Ruth was quite composed as she listened to his reminiscences. "Harry, even if you had shot them, it would have served the little shits right."

It was a favourite trick of some of the local children. More than once, Harry had heard about less composed security services personnel panicking and returning fire without thinking twice. Only when it was too late did they realise they had been tricked and a dead child lay at their feet with their brains blasted out. The shame and the guilt always did for them; especially after being used as propaganda by enemy forces calling them cold-blooded child killers.

"It's not that, though," he replied. "I remember them looking back at me as they ran for it: laughing and laughing. They didn't care that I could have shot them; they just got a big kick out of seeing me fly into a blind panic, even if it did only last for a second. It was the trickery of it. It played on your mind and drove you mad with fear and suspicion. Threat was constant, but not always real…." His words trailed off, momentarily. "It's hard to explain."

"There's no explanation necessary," she said, reaching across the table for his hands. They met half way, gripping each other tight so that her nails dug into the backs of his hands. "At least, not unless you want to."

He knew she was referring to that morning's opening session of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Half the night he had lain awake trying to imagine what it would be like. No matter how it was dressed up in the information leaflets, it felt like he was about to go on trial. Like something straight from the mind of Kafka, he could barely imagine what for. But he knew it was time.

"I don't want to," he admitted. "But I've got to. For everyone's sake."

* * *

Loose gravel crunched under the wheels of the car as Harry and Bill drew to a halt outside the Divis Flats. A tower block two hundred foot high, containing twenty floors of abandoned flats and located in the Republican heartlands of West Belfast. Perfect cover for what they were doing, out of sight and guaranteed to be undisturbed. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Harry looked upwards, to the very top of the tower block. He could just make out the wiry antennae of British Army surveillance equipment that had been installed long before they arrived. Other than that, there was little to see beside the blank windows, sealed against intruders.

The compound in which the flats had been built was also sealed off by hoardings from a development company, due to move in within the next four months. Before the year was out, the tower they were looking at so intently would be nothing but a pile of rubble.

"They've hired a professional demolition team to come in and sort it out," Bill explained, while also studying the outside walls. "You have to wonder why when there's fellas just up the road who can do it for free."

Harry snorted. "We don't negotiate with terrorists," he pointed out. "I think that extends to doing business with them."

"Pride!" Bill retorted, dismissively. "The IRA should be given something useful to channel all that pent up frustration into."

"And give something back to the community they're destroying?" he suggested.

Bill shrugged. "It would be in the best way they know, at least."

Harry laughed as they exchanged a glance before setting off for the front entrance. It had been sealed off with steel window covers, but they'd had them removed prior to their arrival. Instead, there was a large, thick chain coiled through the door handles clasped together on a padlock that weighed a ton. Bill held it while Harry got to work with the key, supplied to them by Belfast City Council under the premise of them working for the demolition team.

Once inside, they found themselves in an empty, echoing porch area. If he looked up, the ceiling was not visible, but the chamber ran the length of the tower block. Only distant lights, fixed to the walls would have given any light, during the hours of darkness. Now, even those were no longer working. They went through a set of wooden doors, to an elevator that no longer worked, with a stairwell to the left. Both of them paused there, looking up into the darkness as their eyes adjusted to the sudden change of light.

"Remind me, Harry, how many floors is it again?"

"Twenty," Harry stated, flatly.

He had a feeling all those extra cross-country runs at Sandhurst were about to come in handy again. After a deep breath, they started their steep ascent. One every floor, there was a small corridor leading to four flats – two to the left and two more to the right. None of the overhead strip lights were working, so they would be reliant upon the end windows for light, as well as their emergency torches. Most of the flats they passed were locked, but others had been left wide open after the former occupants had left. Every so often, they paused to have a look round, making sure no enemy forces had been thinking along the same lines as them and set up equipment of their own.

Besides the graffiti on the magnolia walls, there was no sign of IRA activity anywhere. Up and up they went, growing breathless and hot. Never one with a head for heights, Bill averted his gaze whenever they passed a landing window. If he did catch sight of the sheer drop, he sagged against the interior walls with his head in his hands like a swooning maiden.

"We're only on the sixth floor, Bill," said Harry. "How are you going to handle the twentieth?"

"Let's just get on with it," he replied, gruffly.

Up and up they went, turning up the endless stairwells. It was hot, stuffy and dusty; all factors contributing to the greenness of Bill's pallor as they emerged, at long last, on the twentieth floor. The four flats in front of them had had their doors baton charged by the army, the doors smashed clean off their hinges. Inside, the rooms had been gutted and surveillance equipment had replaced the furniture that once stood there. There was even a powerful telescope set up in one of the windows that looked out over the Falls Road. As Harry's gaze alighted upon it, so did an ingenious idea.

"Here, Bill," he said, bounding over to it. "Look through this thing and trick your mind into thinking you're still on the ground floor!"

Bill was unimpressed. "You're a funny man, Harry Pearce."

Harry flashed him his most beatific of smiles. Meanwhile, Bill had tried to distract himself from his own vertigo by checking over the equipment they had. A reel to reel recorder for taping the conversations they heard, headsets for listening in, all connected to a bulky unit by an interior wall. Harry was relieved that it was nowhere near the windows. Weapons including three handguns had been secured in an old locker, to which Bill had the keys. However, they was no ammo left due to the army not being complete idiots.

"Your gun's loaded, isn't it?" Bill asked.

Harry nodded. "Of course."

Nonetheless, he withdrew it from the holster beneath his jacket and checked. Bill did the same, satisfying them both that all was as it should be. If they crossed into what was once a family kitchen, there were provisions already laid out for them: tinned spam and powdered egg; UHT milk and suspiciously aged looking tea bags. Harry sniffed at it tentatively, wrinkling his nose. Back in the lounge, static crackled to life as Bill flipped through the frequencies.

"Harry!" he called out. "There's something wrong with the bastard antennae!"

Harry closed his eyes and rocked back on his heels. "Shit!" he murmured. Not even he felt like a trip up on to the roof to fix the damn thing.

But it was up there, on the roof that they could see the city as a unified whole. A network of interlocking streets, endless houses the size of matchboxes from that height. Ringed by the Divis Mountain in the west, the Mournes in the south and Cavehill in the north. Napoleon's Nose jutted darkly into the azure skies; the twin cranes of Harland and Wolff dominated the skyline in the east. The peace wall snaked its way from west to north, keeping a warring community apart and reinforcing sectarian divisions with steel and razor wire. There, at the heart of the urban jumble, Belfast city centre nestled among the mountains and the walls, barricades and British Army checkpoints. Smoke curled darkly into heat haze shimmering over the small city; a fire or a bomb, they could not tell. It was probably both.

Harry surveyed it all, breathing in a good lungful of the sweet clear air, before turning on the spot to find Bill lying flat on his belly with his hands gripping a flagpole. The Irish tricolour flapped gently in the soft breeze above him. Sweat beaded his forehead and his face was greener than ever.

"Jesus, Bill!" said Harry, exasperated. "What's the point in you even being here?"

"I'm fine!" he insisted, voice muffled as he lay face down. "I'm abso-fucking-lutely fine!"

"Clearly," Harry sighed, casually stepping over him. As he passed his prostrate friend, he noticed his knuckles white and slick with sweat as he gripped the flagpole, like a drowning man clinging to a life raft. "Is throttling that thing really helping?"

Without waiting for an answer, he crossed to the barrier on the mercifully flat roof. A radio antennae had been fixed to the centre, but its base was close to the edge, where the drainage pipes were. He could see the problem straight away, but to get at the bent antennae, he had to brace his leg against the barrier, bringing him perilously close to the edge while he pulled it back into place. While he worked, there was the sound of movement from his side as Bill slowly pulled himself upright.

"I'm okay," he said aloud. "I'm okay, I'm fine. It's all okay."

Harry couldn't help but laugh as his friend began shuffling timidly over to where he was working on tightening up a lose connection.

"Here: I'll hold this while you do that," said Bill, shakily.

"You do that, Bill," Harry replied, without looking to see what he was actually doing. "You're a great help."

"I know. You'd be bloody lost without me."

Even Harry had to admit it was nerve wracking. The only thing keeping him in place as he working at the antennae was having his foot braced against the barrier and his back wedged against an old chimney stack, on which the broken equipment was fixed. Luckily, it did not take long to get it back in place.

"Hurry up, Harry, I'm going to fall," Bill urged him, just as he tightened the last bolt. "Then I'm going to puke and fall at the same time!"

Harry hopped back down to safety just as Bill lurched forward and vomited against the chimney stack. A heaving that carried enough to scare off some roosting pigeons. That thing he had been helpfully holding was nothing more than a piece of stray wire that wasn't actually connected to anything. With a sigh, he rolled his eyes and prepared to steer his friend back to safety.

Once they were off the roof and back in the flat, they tuned their equipment again. Bill was still trembling, but thanks to some Bushmills Single malt, he was starting to settle. They both listened through the headsets, as Bill altered the frequency and static slowly cleared. Voices formed through the hazy fuzz, clear and distinct as words began to form. Words … someone speaking Irish Gaelic.

They groaned in unison as they saw their efforts going to waste.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me?" said Bill, letting his head bump against the back wall.

Harry managed to raise a rueful smile. "Well, at least we know it's them," he said, looking on the bright side.

Bill returned his look, their eyes meeting across the equipment. After a moment of bewildered silence, they both dissolved into laughter.

* * *

Will paused before he entered the Guildhall, taking a moment to calm his nerves by taking in the medieval structure from the outside. It had always impressed him, every time he passed it he stopped to look but always deferred going inside. Now, the reason he was finally getting to take a look at the interior was to have the details of his father's grisly death spelled out to him. On the pavement outside, there was a rope forming a barrier around the grand main entrance. Small signs had been erected, pointing the right way in. There were other people there, too. Many speaking in strong Ulster accents, clearly over for the Committee. He had to admit to himself, it wasn't what he was expecting.

Before going in, he lit a cigarette and smoked it at his leisure while leaning against the pillars of the entrance. He scanned the passing crowds for any sign of Harry Pearce, recalling that he would be accompanied by his wife. That morning, he had received a text message from Catherine, wishing him good luck for the meeting. Just for the sake of it, he swiped at the screen of his phone to read it again, allowing a small smile to play at his lips.

There was still no sign of Harry by the time he had docked his cigarette out on top of a nearby bin, and the time was just gone ten. But before he could start suspect the old Spook had bottled out, a car with black tinted windows pulled up alongside the pavement outside the Guildhall. Out of the door nearest to him, a woman he did not recognise stepped out. Dressed in a navy blue skirt suit, she was at least fifteen years younger than Harry. But the man himself materialised from the opposite door and he joined hands with the woman when they met on the pavement.

"Sir Harry," said Will, by way of greeting. "Thanks for coming."

Harry raised the ghost of a smile. "I said I would. Let me introduce my wife, Ruth."

He gestured to the younger woman as Will shook her hand. "Lady Pearce, it's nice to meet you."

"Oh, please, just Ruth," she replied, smiling warmly.

"And its Evershed," Harry chipped in from the side. "She doesn't use her married name."

Will blushed, suddenly feeling old fashioned for having made the assumption. "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't realise."

But Ruth was good natured about it. "Harry, you're scaring the boy!" she gently mocked. Turning back to Will, she added: "Don't let him scare you, it's really quite all right."

Introductions made, they headed indoors where they found themselves to be among a large crowd of people all taking seats in pews. The stained glass windows lining the back wall let in a flood of brightly coloured light, illuminating the interior all the way up to the old, wooden beamed ceiling. It was all very beautiful, but it still hadn't been quite what they were expected.

"Er, it's not exactly private, is it," said Will. "I thought it would just be the two of us alone in a room with that lady from Rwanda acting as referee."

"I thought much the same," replied Harry.

But, as it happened, they had to sit through a long, droning speech delivered by Catholic and Protestant clergymen about the importance of openness and transparency. A speech so long it took them until noon, when they found themselves being shepherded through a side door and into a large, stone vaulted chamber that was both freezing cold and so low that Will had to duck down to avoid hitting his head on the supporting arches. There was just one table, with three place mats set. A jug of water was sat in the middle, alongside plastic flowers. Assuming it was theirs, the three of them sat down and chatted idly until the door opened again.

A woman appeared, small and slight, with a bundle of papers in her arms. Clearly flustered, she drew a deep breath before joining them, her eye alighting on Ruth who was obviously sitting in her place.

"Apologies for keeping you all waiting," she said, in accented but perfect English. "My name is Valentina Mukamanzi and I will be acting as your interlocutor. It says here that there are only two of you?"

Ruth hastily rushed out of the way. "I'm not actually meant to be here, but my husband-"

"I asked her to be here," Harry cut over her. "I thought it would be okay?"

Will looked up at the newcomer. "I have no problem with Mrs Evershed being here."

"Very well," replied Valentina. "That won't be a problem."

However, to give the three of them some space, Ruth sat at another table that hadn't been set. She was some way off, but still in Harry and Will's line of vision. Will, meanwhile, felt the apprehension grow again. During the boring speech about why everyone ought to love each other forever, his nerves had been bored right out of him. But now it felt as though a moment had arrived, a pivot on which everything was set to turn. Opposite him, Harry held his gaze but his expression was utterly impassive. Between them, at the head of the small table, the Rwandan lady looked between them both through thick spectacles. She carried with her an air of calm stillness; someone who was in the room but not there for any other function than to make them feel at ease and guide them through a painful process she knew all too well herself.

But, as always with official committees, it began with another round of formal introductions. Even Ruth had to be brought back into the fold for that. They shook hands again and shared a drink from the jug that was set on the table. They each explained why they were there. Will could tell Harry was hating every moment of it and just playing along to make things easier on them. Not that Will could blame him. All he wanted was to get to the heart of the issue, instead of wasting time on niceties. Finally, when the time did come, it seemed to still manage to take them by surprise.

"Sir Harry," said Valentina, in her smooth lilting voice. "Why don't you begin by telling Will what it was you and his father were doing in Northern Ireland?"

Initially, it looked like Harry was going to answer Valentina directly, until she nodded to Will as a reminder that she was not officially in the room. When Harry turned to look at Will again, he noticed the older man had paled significantly. There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke, faltering and hesitant.

"Bill, your father, and I were running a very high level asset within the IRA," he began. "He supplied us with names of IRA members who were sitting on the Army Council. Normally, the Army Council would have been utterly impenetrable to us, but this asset really was that high up. For the record, his code name was Jack Knife but his real name was Brendan McLoan. He told us of a meeting that was taking place at a pub called the Felon's Club, right in the heart of the IRA's Belfast power base in the west of the city and he offered to enable us to listen in to that meeting. Naturally, we agreed. This would be top level intel on the IRA and its plans for future attacks not just in Ireland, but in England. It would also provide information on how the IRA was being funded, and exactly where their guns and semtex was coming from. We were blinded to the risks because of the potential of getting that vital information. We could have crippled them and saved countless lives.

To listen in, we set up our base at the top of an abandoned high rise that was due for demolition. The reception we got up there was perfect – clear as crystal, which was not so easy back then. The Divis Flats were just down the road from the Felon's Club. As it happens, we were walking into one big trap."

Will listened with rapt attention, realising that the moment really had come. He sat up straight, watching Sir Harry closely as he talked. He hadn't even begun properly and his distress was becoming visible already.

"Do you have anything you wish to ask, Will?"

It was Valentina who spoke, giving him a start. He had almost forgotten she was there.

"Okay," he said, hesitantly. "But, I think I understand actually. It's all good."

"Perhaps, Sir Harry, you could explain some of the spy jargon you use?" Valentina suggested. "For the benefit of Mr Crombie, who I believe is not in the service."

Harry looked instantly apologetic. "Of course. Stop me any time and I'll give you an over view."

"Happy days," said Will, although it was anything but. "Now all I want to know is how my Dad died."

Once more, Harry met his gaze from across the small space of the table. His expression, normally so unreadable, became set with determination. "Very well," he replied.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading this, a review would be lovely if you have a minute. Thanks again. **


	7. Dancing with the Devil

**Thank you to everyone who has read this story, especially those who have taken time to review. Thank you.**

**In the interests of keeping fact from fiction: La Mon Hotel really did happen and the bomb really was made from a substance close to napalm. It's commonly believed that two of the bombers were Crown informants and thus protected from prosecution. **

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Dancing with the Devil**

Long, sultry summer days slipped by in a haze of heat and second hand cigarette smoke. Endless minutes bleeding into eternal hours of torpor atop the high rise. They crouched around the recorder, ears pressed to the speakers waiting and waiting for someone to speak. Even an IRA man calling his granny would have been something, if only to break the monotony of radio silence. Harry tapped a biro against the table top, beating out a grating tattoo that only ended when Bill near crushed his hand as though swatting a fly to make it stop.

Every evening they hauled themselves out of their semi-comas to meet with Brendan McLoan. Down by the docks under the cover of darkness, they waited some more. Belfast's shipbuilding empire had long succumbed to the advances of air travel and the Harland and Wolff cranes loured over the city as nothing more than a monument to dead industry. Nearby, the rope weavers and linen mills lay dark and dormant. Obsolete machinery, abandoned and rusting, unloved and unmissed in the endlessly decaying economy. In its place there came no new schemes, no investments or new opportunities. In its place, came only this monstrous conflict; filling the economic black hole with blood and bodies. A war fought out on the doorsteps of the battered populace, amidst the relicts of a by-gone age. It wasn't even a by-gone age worth fighting for, so thought Harry.

Brendan came and went. Imparting information about movements of IRA battalions across the Armagh countryside. Things had been quiet since La Mon, in February of that year, when a bomb full of napalm had torn through a hotel full of holidaying diners. An atrocity that seemed to have shamed even the most ardent of Republicans into a period of self-reflection. As such, the IRA's campaign seemed to have wound down. But no one, least of all Special Branch and MI5, were so naïve as to believe it would last for long.

"They should sue for peace now," Bill said, during another wait for Brendan. "While the bastards aren't actually up to much."

It was true they had gathered no real intel during their long bouts of listening in to the Felon's Club. But that didn't mean the IRA weren't up to anything. They were just hiding away in shame.

"I believe they tried all that about eighteen months ago," replied Harry, drolly. "The Sunningdale Agreement ring any bells?"

Bill groaned. Even now, the pair of them could hear the ghostly echoes of Ian Paisley's voice, reverberating across the misty grounds of Stormont, crushing that fledgling peace. _"Never … never … never …"_ Never what? Never make peace? Never give up? Just keep fighting an endless conflict that never, never, never ends? The answer to that question lay all around them: the dead mangled in the bombed out shops; the running gun battles shattering the night and the British Soldiers marching down narrow terraced streets in block formation. There was the answer they sought; the grim reality in which they operated.

Back at the Divis Tower, they once more sat around the speakers listening to the unpunctuated hiss. Bill lit another cigarette, flicking a zippo open, sending the brief scent of petrol cutting through the fragrant summer air. Harry winced against the acrid smoke, narrowing his eyes as he squinted through the plume.

"Brendan wasn't involved in La Mon, was he?" he asked. Not that either of them were in Belfast when La Mon happened.

Bill shrugged. "Buggered if I know." After a brief pause, he smirked as he sucked on his cigarette again and added: "Which spares me a rather undignified end to a lovely day."

"Bill, I'm being serious," Harry said, insistently. "Do you think he could be one of the agents in question?"

After another draw on the cigarette, Bill turned thoughtful. "With all these phantom agents floating around, we can't even be sure those boys were informants. But Brendan's been working with us for years now. Practically since the conflict began. He's provided good intel and that's really all that matters." He paused again, regarding Harry carefully, his dark grey eyes narrowed. "No one likes dancing with the devil, Harry. But you have to if you want to find out how he moves and really get one over him."

Harry knew that. But thinking about it logically from a cold distance was a long way from joining hands with them and taking a waltz around the arena. He could see the sense in it, he just couldn't stomach the aftertaste. Further questioning was cut off by the crackle of the speakers. Rushing to grab their headsets, they pressed them close to their ears and Bill hastily docked the cigarette inside a half-drunk cup of coffee. A habit that set Harry's teeth on edge even more than smoking itself.

* * *

Will was listening with rapt attention, focused only on Harry as he talked. There were only two other people in the room with them, but even if the entire England team had been there, he wouldn't have noticed. However, he occasionally glanced sidelong to look at the notes their intermediary was taking, noting that his father's name only ever appeared as "Soldier A". It seemed that not even death could strip him of his secret vows and restore a personality where only shadows seemed to exist.

Eventually, when Harry stopped talking and the first part of a long story reached its natural conclusion, he took a moment to gather his thoughts.

"My Dad knew the risks, didn't he?" he asked, at length. "I mean, he said it himself: you've got to dance with the devil."

Harry looked rather surprised at the question. "He knew. We all knew. They told you that – and they tell you that still – when you first join the service."

Finding his mouth to be unpleasantly dry, Will reached for the water jug and poured himself a fresh glass and offering the same to Harry. Someone had decided to add slices of lemon to it, the pale flesh now soggy and bloated drifted limply to the surface like a dead goldfish. It made him wrinkle his nose.

"But, it was this guy Brendan who sold my Dad out, wasn't it?" he asked, cutting to the chase. "That's where you're leading me, isn't it?"

At the edge of their table, Valentina sat rigid in her chair, glancing at him from over the rim of her spectacles the way his old school teacher used to.

"Mr Crombie, we really do advise to let the participants tell their own stories in their own time," she explained, gently.

Still, he picked up a note of cautious rebuke in her tone that made him blush. "Sorry, Sir Harry, I didn't mean-"

"It's quite all right," Harry cut over him, waving down his apologies. "But we'll get there. I promise."

Will leaned back in his seat, casting a glance over his shoulder to where Ruth was still sitting by the side. She was looking over at them both, attentive but unobtrusive. The expression on her pale face was one of only mild interest, but the spark in her clear blue eyes gave her away. She was analysing and storing every snippet of information her husband revealed. Silently assessing; forming conclusions known only to herself. It was almost disconcerting, until he quickly screened her out again by returning his attention to Sir Harry.

Given the nature of the job, Will considered his questions carefully. Could Harry reveal this? That? The other? Was anything that happened over thirty years ago even still a secret? He wouldn't know at all unless he asked, and this was his one chance. But almost as if for reassurance, he glanced over at Valentina the Intermediary before proceeding.

"You were saying that once you were back at the Divis Flats, you and my Dad were talking when you suddenly got a signal," he said, framing the question into some form of context. "I don't suppose you can say what you heard?"

To his mild surprise, Harry nodded as he sipped at his water. "I don't see why not," he said. "This is going to be sealed, after all. We're all bound under secrecy laws. But all that call was, was a phone call to another Brigade leader, somewhere in Mid Ulster. Tyrone, I think. It's all farms and sheep down that way. But it's where the IRA like to hide weapons caches … and bodies. But on that occasion, we overheard coordinates for the location of an arms dump."

"You were able to check it out?"

Will realised he was only asking out of curiosity, but he had never had a window opened onto his father's job before. He fully intended on throwing himself through it. But Harry's darkening expression curtailed his excitement.

"The thing is, if you act on the intelligence you have, it can give the game away," he explained. "If we went stampeding down there to neutralise the arms dump, they'd know we had a source. Now, let's hypothesise that that phone call was the only time the dump was mentioned: that would mean the intel either leaked from the person on the phone, or it came from a bug in the phone. They would take the phone apart first, before killing the man on an assumption and we would be found out. The 1970s was not quite the age of micro technology and bugs were as big as your fist."

"So … you just sat on the information and did nothing?" Will asked, dubiously. "What was the point?"

The older man's expression darkened again. Will could see he had hit another snag.

"We didn't do that, either. We sent a backup team to carry out round the clock surveillance on the area; it was standard procedure at that time: get the people using the weapons, rather than just the weapons themselves. As it happens, that was another spring in the trap they were setting for us."

Will did not respond immediately. He just felt a familiar coldness closing over him. A metal band constricting his chest as he tried to imagine what happened in those last few hours of his father's life. Despite the drop in temperature, he tried to raise a smile and bring some levity to the situation.

"I always thought of him as charging into danger zones and taking out the bad guys at the last minute," he said, sounding distant as he recalled fanciful notions prevalent in his childhood. "You know, rather like Call of Duty only with real bullets. It seems more like a game of chess: moving pieces into just the right place, at just the right time, for the ultimate checkmate."

A smile twitched at the corners of Harry's mouth. "We do make rather good chess players. At least until the unknown enemy suddenly turns the board on us when we're not looking."

Finally, Will could feel pieces of the story slotting into place. A picture was beginning to form out of the haze of confusion created by what others had told him. But, it was also at that point that the morning session was called to an end for lunch. He, Harry and Ruth all rose to their feet together, heading silently for the door. Back out in the main body of the Guildhall, Will began to lag back, giving Harry and Ruth time together without getting in the way. Now was not the time to play gooseberry and he needed time to collect his own thoughts.

It was surprisingly empty, back in the main hall. Just one man was sat in the benches, talking to another – much younger – man. Father and son, by the looks of it. Will glanced over them both, picking up soft Welsh accents but not the words as they murmured to one another. He passed them by with a brief nod of recognition as he headed for the double door exit, for fresh air and a quick smoke before finding something to eat. Outside, the sun was still shining and life in the city continued relentlessly. There was a woman sitting on the steps outside, her back towards him. Only as he went to pass her by did she look up, a smile of recognition on her face.

"Hey," she said, pushing a loose strand of blonde hair from her face. "How did it go?"

It was Catherine; Will was so lost in his own thoughts he almost failed to recognise her. He mustered a half-hearted shrug.

"As well as can be expected," he replied. "Your Dad's still inside with your …" he trailed off briefly, wondering whether 'step-mother' was the right word to describe Ruth. He decided it probably wasn't. "With his wife."

"Oh, Ruth," she replied, blankly. "Well, better leave them to it. Fancy some lunch?"

A natural smile came easily. "Sure!"

He picked up his pace and lifted his spirits out of his shoes as they set off towards the bustling crowds of humanity.

* * *

"Are you not hungry?" Ruth sounded concerned.

They rounded the corner and re-entered the main hall after losing track of where they were meant to be going.

"Not really," he answered, honestly. "You go ahead and get something, I'll wait here."

For once, she opted not to press the issue and left him where he stood. He watched her leaving via the main entrance, but not before stopping to talk to someone he could not see. Curiously, he peered round the edge of the door, to where Nathan Frazer was sat in the middle bench beside a considerably older man. An older man who extended a hand towards Ruth, who shook it keenly before pointing the way outside. Oddly, they left together, leaving Nathan alone.

It was enough for Harry to have his own problems momentarily shifted aside, which he seized on willingly. Walking up the aisle, he caught his newest Junior Case Officer's eye.

"Hullo there," Nathan greeted him. "You missed Ruth."

"I know," Harry informed him, sliding in next to him on the bench. If they looked ahead, stained glass windows dazzled them with bright light of a hundred different hues. "Who was that she left with?"

"Oh, that's just my Dad," he replied, quickly. "He's not often in London and she's just taking him somewhere he can get some lunch."

Harry turned from the windows, looking directly at Nathan and trying to gage his mood. The lights of the windows were reflected in his eyes, making them almost iridescent in their blueness. Although not exactly famed for his over-bright joy in life, at that moment Nathan looked particularly morose even by his own standards. Harry hated to intrude, but nor could he very well walk off and leave. So he asked the question that was playing on his mind.

"I thought you did not get on with your father?"

"I don't," he answered. "I didn't."

"I'd forgotten he was a military man," said Harry, diverting away from the more personal. "Still, I didn't realise he would be here today."

Finally, Nathan returned his look.

"Sorry, should I have mentioned it? I didn't know I'd be coming here as well until I decided to just show up."

He was worried he had done something wrong again. Harry was quick to assure him: "It's fine. Anyway, I'm Soldier B, my friend is Soldier A. What Soldier is he?"

Nathan raised a half-smile. "Soldier D, I believe. They're not very imaginative when it comes to pseuds, are they? We could have come up with better than that back at the Grid."

Harry managed a brief laugh. But, he had to admit he had grown rather fond of being just a letter. It stripped away who he was and people's expectations of him. It freed him up to speak openly, without feeling like he had a name to live up to. Names brought with them reputations – especially his. Here, he was simply Soldier B. A moniker over which the eye glazed; it drew no attention to itself. There was no backstory, other than that which he told. There were no facts and figures to remember. It was an empty name into which he could pour all his darkest thoughts and deeds, then bury it and never have to look at it again. After that, he could slip back into the skin of Harry Pearce. He hoped Soldier B could take a battering, because the best was yet to come.

Returning to Nathan, he managed to gather a few of his old small talk skills.

"Where did they go?"

"I've no idea," replied Nathan. "Anywhere, gets Dad out of my hair."

"I had much the same thought about Ruth," said Harry. If he was entirely honest, he felt a little guilty for bringing her along when he should have been having this conversation with Will in private. It was personal, not for general consumption. But still, he needed her. "Do you think you might regret coming here?"

Nathan met his gaze, but remained quiet for some time. Despite exuding an air all-pervading pessimism that Harry could almost reach out and touch, he looked thoughtful. As though something was actually being worked towards. He hadn't come here as an exercise in futility.

"The thing is," Nathan finally answered. "You can't really go through life with all this bad blood. It'll just destroy you. Then the old man will drop off his perch one day, and I'll be left wondering if I could have fixed things. If you don't try, it only makes things worse and enough's happened already, I think." He paused, looking away again and laughed a dry laugh. "It's like that bit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, isn't it? When he's trying to wrench that sink out of the wall with his bare hands, but it's too heavy: 'Hell, I tried!' Well, I've got to try."

Harry let his gaze wander back up to the windows of the Guildhall once more. Try. It was all he could do now. After a moment's quiet reflection, he rose to his feet but before leaving, he looked down at Nathan once more.

"Give your father a chance," he advised. "He might just not be that bully you remember after all."

Nathan looked sceptically back up at him. "Like I said: I'll try."

There was no regret more acute than the regret of something you hadn't done. Harry drew a deep breath and bid Nathan farewell, returning to the inner sanctum of the Guildhall to wait for Ruth and Will to return. While he waited, he thought through the events leading up to Bill's death once more: times and sequences. After so many years, it was a struggle slotting everything into the right place. To keep it coherent. But, he had to at least try.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading and a review would be lovely, if you have a minute.**

**Apologies for the late update, as well. RL has been hectic busy this last week.**


	8. Black Saturday

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story: it means a lot. Thank you.**

* * *

**Chapter Eight: Black Saturday**

They found a little bistro down one of London's numerous side streets. Small and squat, whitewashed with hanging baskets draped with dying snap dragons over the door. An old fashioned wooden sign swung on a rusting chain, bearing the name of the establishment and tempting in the tourists seeking a taste of Ye Olde Englande. Mullion windows looked out onto the street, obscuring the passers-by in a blur. It was beside one such window Catherine set her jacket over a chair, nabbing it before the backpack bearing, sock and sandal wearing American holiday makers could nab it from beneath their noses.

Once settled with their pot of tea, Will took in their surroundings with only a surface veneer of interest. Only when the waitress brought over their lunch did they finally settle into a proper talk, free from the threat of interruption. Between bites of ciabatta, he brought her up to speed with the reconciliation talks while skating over specific details her father had so far divulged. Catherine listened attentively and without interruption.

"Do you must miss him?" she asked, after he had fallen silent.

Ignoring his instinct to furnish her with the answer he thought she expected to hear, he replied honestly. "No, to be honest. You can't miss something you've never had. Even if it's your Dad."

As soon as the words tripped off his tongue, he could feel the colour rising in his face. Had he been a little too honest? He could never tell until it was too late and it always left him feeling like an unfeeling monster. But throughout his life, he had never known how to feel about his father. Sometimes, when people looked at him, he wondered if they expected to see a storm of grief in his eyes. But it had never been like that. It was something more subtle, something that wouldn't simply burn itself out in a flash of wailing and tears. There was just this yawning space in his life, a void that never went away; an empty slot in every memory and family photo. An absence of someone who was never really there.

"I'm sorry," Catherine replied, sounding abashed. "Stupid question, really."

"No," he was quick to assure her. "No, it wasn't. And I hope I don't sound like an arsehole for saying it. It's a bit like when one of your teeth falls out and there's just a hole there and it seems no matter what you do to distract yourself, you just can't stop poking at it." He trailed off, defeated by his own fumbling attempts at coming up with a fitting analogy. "It's hard to explain. It's just an absence. A permanent absence."

Catherine seemed to have temporarily forgotten her egg and chips, nudging side her plate so that there was little else between them. But still holding her fork, she gestured to the café at large. "You must have thought about him, though. When you were a kid, at least."

"All the time," he replied. "You know, I did that thing all kids like me do. You see the photos and memorise the face, and fill them out with a personality of your own invention. All fanciful bullshit, but normal six year old, hero worship stuff. I could make my Dad into anything I wanted him to be. I think you need that, when you're a child and you know you're never going to get to do the things all the other boys do with their Dads. But you get to a certain age when that fantasy loses its appeal and you need the truth."

He tailed off as the expression in Catherine's face changed. From mild interest, to a sudden and clear understanding.

"And of course, when you ask for that truth, there's nothing anyone can tell you because it's all so bloody secretive," she chipped in.

"Exactly!" he concurred. "Mum had the best of intentions, I'm sure. But I think she told me stuff just to shut me up, in the end."

Catherine raised a pained smile. "I did the same, when Dad left for good. But instead of constructing some superhero, I assumed he was up to no good. I thought he was like one of Stalin's NKVD secret police, silently picking off political dissidents and cultural subversives. I honestly thought he was judge, jury and executioner; rounding up people at will. Actually, I was afraid of him. Then fear turned to hate, until we met up again a few years ago."

She left it there, returning to the meal she had barely touched. Although his curiosity had been piqued, Will let the matter drop rather than risk opening a can of worms. All through his childhood imaginings, he had never once considered that he and his father would not get along.

"I'm glad things are better between you and Harry now, though," he said, lamely. "He seems okay to me."

"He is," she agreed, gulping down a hasty bite. Then she paused, gathering her thoughts. "On the contrary, he isn't anywhere near as bullish as he makes himself out to be. He really is quite … fragile. And what happened to your father was the beginning of that, at least as I understand it. It was something Mum always said. He just changed, after Bill was killed."

Listening to what she had to say about Harry brought a tremor of guilt rippling the surface of his feelings. It was the first realisation that wasn't just him on this all-consuming quest for the truth.

"Do you think I'm making it worse by going ahead with this?" he asked.

"Perhaps," she replied. "But in the long run, it could just be the very thing that finally heals him." There, she paused again, her gaze meeting his across the small table. "It could even heal you both."

* * *

Once she was assured that Nathan's Dad could find his own way back to the Guildhall, Ruth hailed a taxi and headed to Thames House. Lunch consisted of a shop bought, pre-packaged sandwich with yellowish mush inside, which she deposited by her computer and quickly forgot about. She waved a brief hello to Lucas, who was the last man standing on the Grid as the others had all vanished for a lunch break, then accessed the national database.

Without hesitating, she typed in the name of the man she was looking for: Brendan LcLoan. Just as his details appeared on the screen, so too did Lucas. The Senior Case Officer loomed over her computer, casting a long shadow under the overhead strip lights. Inwardly, she cursed his uncharacteristic need for small talk.

"Harry not with you?" he asked.

She forced a smile. "No. He's still at the Guildhall."

Hoping he would go away, she returned to McLoan's file. But, the shadow didn't so much as waver.

"Need a hand with anything?"

Ruth suppressed a sigh. "No thanks."

Finally, her force-field of frostiness took effect and Lucas pushed himself away from her station with a grumbled: "please yourself". Suddenly, as always, she felt guilty and heaved a sigh of resignation.

"Actually," she said, forcing herself to brighten up. "There might just be something."

Clearly not in the mood to hold a grudge, Lucas whipped back round looking hopeful. "Is it about Harry's Irish issues?" he asked, pulling up a chair beside her. "If there's anything Ros or I can do, you know we'd be happy to."

"I think this is something Harry must do himself," she said, turning the screen towards him. "This man, Brendan McLoan. He's still alive, according to this file. He used to be an Asset but was burned after Bill Crombie's murder. I need all the information you can find on him. Try to find out whether he was involved in the bombing of La Mon hotel. Find out what he's been up to since 1978, and what he's doing and where he is now. Bring in Ros as well, but don't breathe a word to anyone else."

Lucas was as taut as a bowstring beside her. His brow darkening into a frown as he studied the man's image on the screen in front of him. "La Mon Hotel," he repeated, sounding distant. "That was the fireball wasn't it?"

"It was a device made from a substance close to napalm," she confirmed. "Two of the bombers were feeding Five information from within, so they were protected from prosecution even if they were caught. But I have a feeling this guy was also involved heavily with Crombie's murder, which happened about four months later. It's just something Harry was saying at the reconciliation talks. There's more coming, and I want to be prepared for it."

She was being deliberately vague. Even she didn't want to fully acknowledge the thoughts in her head. But she knew Lucas was sharp enough to pick up on where she was blindly leading herself. He gave a brief nod.

"I take we're not actually going to be doing anything with the file we compile," he said. "You just want us to get what we can?"

"Yes. Then it's up to Harry," she clarified. "And, thanks Lucas."

She got up again, ready to return to the Guildhall for the afternoon session before Harry could start to wonder where she had got to.

He was waiting outside for her, along with Catherine, Will and Nathan himself. A whole group of them standing in a pool of broad afternoon sunshine, chatting casually to one another. Will was standing apart like a pariah as he rushed a last minute cigarette before heading back inside. She greeted him with a smile before joining Harry, who she kissed on the cheek by way of a hello. Harry broke off the conversation he was having with his daughter, turning to her with a faint smile on his face.

"I wondered where you got to," he said. "Fraser senior made it back twenty minutes ago."

Ruth shrugged. "I left my purse back at the house, like an idiot, so I had to run back and get it. Sorry for abandoning you like that."

If he detected the lie, he didn't let on. All Harry did was turn to say goodbye to Nathan and kiss Catherine, before leading the way back indoors. Ruth gripped his hand as they went, Will following close behind. Back through the main Hall, beyond the side doors and returning to the same room they were in before. Ruth eased the door closed behind them, muffling out the sounds of the distant hall, sealing them inside once more.

* * *

There were no curtains in the apartment and Harry had been sitting in the sun for too long. His fair skin turned pink and tender, but still he didn't move. Looking through the eye of the telescope he scanned the streets far below, watching as the parade set off from the Shankill Road. A vast procession, snaking through the narrow streets, a hundred banners fluttering bright orange against the blue skies. Even up there, with the window open, he could hear the frenzied pounding of the Lambeg drums and the tuneless buzz of scores of pipers, all marching behind the men in black sashes and bowler hats, orange lilies wilting in the heat.

"They're not Orangemen," he stated, half-heartedly. "They're wearing black."

Bill was tinkering with the equipment, but paused as he glanced over to where Harry was still watching the procession.

"They are," he replied. "They're like the highest order of Orangemen, so they get special sashes to wear. It's Black Saturday."

"Oh." Harry could no longer pretend to give a fuck. "They're all barking mad," he concluded, stepping away from the telescope.

The sound of the drums seemed to follow him as he crossed the room and sat back down. An endless beat pounding across the city, an army marching to war and itching for the fight. Today of all days, they would get it soon enough. He looked at the clock on the wall, the minute hand counting down the hour when the meeting in the Felon's Club was due to begin, while Bill concluded his last minute checks. They were both tense. Proceedings conducted in silence, expect when they made desperate and clamorous attempts to break the tension with inane small talk.

"King William of Orange was probably gay," said Harry. "Do you think anyone's told them?"

Bill paused, eyebrow raised and a half-smile curling the corner of his mouth. "Do you want to be the one to tell them?"

"I'll leave that to you; you're the diplomatic one: you can break it to them gently."

To pass the last few minutes before the meeting began, Harry retrieved his gun and stripped it down. He had no real notion of why, seeing as he lacked cleaning materials. But he stripped it and reassembled it all the same, slotting the magazine carefully back into place and dusting off the business end with an old rag. Meanwhile, the static on the line cleared to a silence as they reached the frequency of the devices inside the club. Again, Harry's line of sight rose to the clock on the wall where it hang over a patch of peeling wall paper. Holding his breath, he counted down the seconds until three pm, when the meeting began sharp.

The signal came after what seemed an eternity. Bill nudged him and passed over a set of headphones.

"We're on," he said, quietly.

Harry reached across the table and nudged the record button, watching the little red light glimmer dully as voices sounded from up the road, inside the Felon's Club. They began, helpfully, with a roll call of who was present, and from which brigade of the IRA they represented – all twelve of them. Harry met Bill's gaze, both of them smirking like the cats that finally got the cream.

Patrick McCann, from the West Belfast brigade. Sean Mallon, from the South Armagh brigade. Brendan McLoan from the North Belfast brigade…. That last name brought them both up sharp.

"I thought he was just some foot soldier," Harry whispered, pushing back the headphones.

Bill's brow had darkened into a frown, but otherwise remained perfectly composed. "I didn't know he was on the Army Council, either," he replied, equally quietly. "I wonder what else he isn't telling us?"

Whatever the case with McLoan, there was nothing they could do about it until they saw him again. But the discrepancy played on Harry's mind. Only a week ago he had told them he could not supply the names of everyone on the Army Council, now they discover he's on that self-same council. As ever, Bill focused on the positive.

"Think of it this way, if he is a permanent member of the Army Council, just imagine all the valuable intel he can give us now."

Harry shrugged and resumed listening in to the meeting. It was impossible to tell who was talking, but that could be deciphered later by voice analysis experts. What they were saying was of far more interest to them. Background noise was minimal, for a meeting of twelve men. Occasionally, a door opened and closed. Muffled sounds of papers being shuffled, or the click of a lighter as a cigarette was lit. Over it all, one voice was dominant. After greeting everyone in Irish, the meeting continued in English:

"Ever since La Mon, our comrades have been spat at in the streets," the unknown voice was saying. "We cannot allow that to happen again. From now on, our targets are strictly commercial and political. So here is what I propose: the Callaghan government will fall and he will be forced to call a General Election. The only reason he's stalling is because he knows he will lose and we'll be stuck with the Tories-"

"Aye, but your woman-" someone interjected, but found himself cut off again.

"Aye, but your woman must not be underestimated," voice one stated, firmly. "Just because Thatcher is female doesn't automatically mean she'll be a soft-hearted pushover."

"I didn't think you'd need that spelling out to you with a missus like yours, Paddy," a third voice laughed.

"Jesus, Sean, would you fuck up already," the first interrupter shot back.

"Is Maggie Thatcher really a woman? I reckon she's got her bollocks in that handbag of hers," someone else butted in, but went ignored. Across from Harry, Bill couldn't help but smirk at the wisecrack.

"Okay, okay let's get back to the point here: we have an incoming British Prime Minister. What of it?"

There was silence in the meeting room. Harry and Bill both leaned forwards, towards the reel to reel, as if there was something they were missing. All the while, the distant drums continued their thunderous progress through the streets below. A jarring, pulsating buzz.

"Do you hear that?" the first voice asked, quizzically.

The question was met with silence. Even Harry and Bill paused, looking over at each other in wonder.

"What?" said the third voice, rather perplexed.

There was another long pause, during which Harry could not even guess at what was happening inside that meeting room. The tension swelled as the silence dragged itself out interminably. Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat, holding Harry's gaze as both their minds raced ahead, second guessing what was going on. Then, the first voice spoke again:

"I think I can hear two rats from MI5 gnawing on our wires from the top of Divis Flats!" he laughed.

Harry instinctively pushed himself against the back wall, his heart jumping out of his chest cavity and into his throat. Bill had frozen, halfway between pulling off the headphones when the second voice picked up the thread of the first:

"Oh really?" he asked, casually. "I thought there was a bad smell in here."

"Don't worry, they're not quite as alone as they think they are..."

Harry was starting to wonder whether Bill was even registering what was going on. He looked over at his friend in desperation.

"Bill," Harry said, his mouth dry. "They fucking know we're here."

"Aye, we know you're there boys," the first voice chimed in, almost as if in response to him. "Don't worry, you won't be all alone up there for long-"

They both pulled the plug on the equipment, throwing the headsets to the ground. But Harry knew it was too little too late. His stomach churned painfully as he struggled to regain control of his own thoughts. But already, Bill had swung into action. He picked up his gun and checked the ammunition.

"They'll have had us surrounded long before that meeting started," he said, his voice barely registering a tremor of alarm. "They're probably already in here, penetrating every floor and cutting off every exit."

Harry was barely capable of taking it in. "What?" he snapped. "What do you mean? We must have a way out."

His hands trembled as he picked up his own gun, from where it was left on top of a chest of drawers. Still the drums pounded in his head, the procession drawing closer. A vast parade that was now blocking all roads to West Belfast. Their back up team was standing guard over a weapons dump in Co Tyrone, over eighty miles west of the city. They were hemmed in with the IRA closing ranks around the Divis Flats, cornered like rabbits in a slowly tightening snare. Harry could almost feel his throat constricting as the shadow of the enemy darkened every escape route.

But Bill drew a deep breath and slipped the safety catch off his gun. "Harry," he said, firmly. "Harry, stay with me. Understand? Stay with me no matter what. We can get out of this."

Harry's stomach went into a painful spasm, but he managed a jerky nod of the head all the same.

* * *

**Thank you again for reading! Reviews would be lovely, if you have a minute to spare.**


	9. The Fifteenth Floor

**Thank you to everyone who has read this story and especially to those who have taken time to review. Thank you.**

**Also, apologies for the late update. RL and all that.**

* * *

**Chapter Nine: The Fifteenth Floor**

Despite the overwhelming urge to drop and everything and run from the flat, Harry forced himself to stay still. If he followed his gut reaction now, he knew he would only be running into the outstretched arms of the IRA; an act as foolish as it was cowardly. A minute to gather their wits was all that they needed, a precious minute to clear their heads and make an attempt at rational thought. But rather than let even that minute go to waste, Bill swung into action by wrenching the boards off the old fireplace and dropping them haphazardly into the hearth. His breathing was laboured, betraying his anxiety as he worked quickly, seemingly uncaring about how much noise he made.

Realising what he was doing, Harry rushed to help by emptying every drawer in the desk and bureau. He came away with great bundles of papers clutched tightly to his chest. Papers containing contact details of agents and assets across the province. Other documents contained details of troop movements across violent hotspots surrounding the Irish border, as well as personal information about their most prized Assets inside the Provisional IRA and the INLA. Information that, should it fall into the IRA's hands, could cripple the British Army in Northern Ireland for years to come. Without thinking, Harry bundled it all into the hearth, crumpling it in his fists before shoving it into the bars of the grate. Before he even finished, Bill had retrieved lighter fluid from his own bag and squirted it liberally over the papers.

"My lighter," he said, tersely.

Harry followed the line of his eye, to the table top where the zippo sat by the speakers. He could reach it if he leaned over, which he did. Flicking the flint himself, the flame barely touched the corner of a jutting paper before the whole lot went up in a startling rush of flame and smoke.

"We need to keep looking," said Harry. "Are there any more?"

Bill didn't answer, but he sprang to his feet and started turning the place over.

"Trash the equipment, Harry," he called out, over his shoulder.

Before he could think too hard about it, Harry found himself yanking cables out of the back of machines, while Bill, having already called for backup, wrenched the phone out of its socket. Tape recordings had to be destroyed, along with their precious intelligence. Months of research and hard, dangerous work going up in smoke. Harry watched it burn; he watched the tape reels wither and melt, dripping into the blackened ash of almost twenty files. Not a word, not even a stray number, could be left behind for the IRA to get their murderous hands on.

"That's it," said Bill. "We're done."

Although the greater danger remained, Harry still felt a weak tremor of relief. Even if they died, no one else would because of any paper trail they neglected. He turned from the flames to look up at Bill, standing over him as he checked his gun one final time.

"They know we're here," said Harry. "They'll be here already, searching for us."

He could feel the tables turning, the rules changing. Moscow Rules. They were in enemy territory and now everyone they met had to be treated as a potential enemy. All they had was each other. Slowly, Bill lowered to his haunches, looking Harry in the eye.

"Stay with me," he said, "Unless I say otherwise. If I tell you to run for cover, then you run for cover. Okay?"

The thought alone horrified him. "I am not leaving you," he insisted.

In the face of the emergency, Bill didn't labour the point. He handed Harry the gun he'd put down while burning the papers and headed for the exit. His hand reached for the door, but then paused as he looked over his shoulder at the fire. Harry couldn't second guess what he was thinking.

"Maybe we should burn the whole apartment?" he said.

Harry frowned. "That would make it rather obvious-"

"That's the point," he cut in, insistently. "The IRA will see that we've been here and head to the top floor while we're busy making for the ground floor. All we have to do is pass each other without being seen."

"Oh, great Bill, and how do we do that in a tower block with only two stairwells?" Harry retorted. One of those, rather helpfully, being a fire escape.

But Bill didn't looked fazed as he added: "And a lift shaft."

Unsure if he heard that right, Harry needed a repeat. The lift shaft. The lift was at the ground floor level, the electrics had already been cut so it wasn't going anywhere. But the mere thought of climbing down a two hundred foot lift shaft made the palms of his hands slick with sweat, before even contemplating the possible consequences for Bill.

"Bill, you get vertigo if you stand up too fast-"

"Yeah well, I'm sure I can man up and take it on a special occasion like this one," he murmured darkly in his own defence. He turned away, looking towards the door that was already off its hinges. "You heard them, the IRA are already here Harry. The fire escape is an external staircase down the side of the building and made of aluminium. We will have no cover at all and completely exposed like that, we'll be sitting ducks. There's only one stairwell inside, and they'll have that covered too. They'll be infiltrating every level-"

"Well what else do you suggest then?" Harry snapped back. "Every flat in this tower is empty. I say we descend a floor at a time, take it slowly and see if we can't give them the slip that way."

Bill sighed heavily, running a hand through his hair in agitation. He turned from Harry quickly, using an old iron poker to knock the burning papers from the hearth. "Open the window, Harry. We want them to see the smoke and draw them up here."

It was too late for reservations. Harry crossed the threshold of the apartment again, to where the telescope once stood and wrenched the window open. On instinct alone, he moved quickly, but almost not quick enough. Bullets shattered the window, splintering glass over the table top. Harry launched himself forwards, pulling Bill to the ground in a rugby tackle just as the volley of gunfire came to as abrupt an end as its beginning. Together they sprawled on the threadbare carpet, breathing in the damp and silverfish. For a long moment, as the echo of the blast faded, they stared into each other's eyes like lovers caught in a cinch behind the bike sheds: dazed and startled.

"I think they know we're here now," Bill panted.

Harry replied with a jerky nod before recovering himself enough to move. He grabbed his gun and headed straight for the door. Bill followed close behind, heading for the exit as the apartment began to burn. Even with the window open, the smoke was fast becoming dense and suffocating, even though only a rug and half an armchair had caught the flames. Slowly, they crept to the nineteenth floor, backs pressed to the wall as they moved. Guns at the ready, loaded with safety catches off. Every footfall was measured, placed softly on the lino covered floor. They kept their ears strained for every small sound, but all Harry could hear was the drums beating endlessly, round and round. A buzz of pipers wending down the nearby Grosvenor Road. Inwardly, he cursed them all again.

"I wish those bands would fuck up and fuck off," Bill hissed under his breath.

They had called for backup, but all the main roads were closed because of the marches. Only ambulances could get through and even then with great effort. Their usual backup team was eighty miles away, watching over a fictional arms dump. False information fed to them by their false asset.

"Brendan must have told them," Harry said, as they circled the stairwell for the eighteenth floor. "He sold us out for a seat on the Army Council."

"That much I had already guessed," replied Bill, under his breath.

"I'm going to skin the little cunt alive-"

"Not now!" Bill cut over him. "Let's get out of here first and then we can deal with McLoan later. Understand?"

Harry, once afraid but now simply seething, had to draw a deep breath and swallow hard before replying. "As you wish."

They continued in silence. Overhead strip lighting flickered on and off, creating a strange strobe affect that illuminated their surroundings in rapid blinks of light. Somewhere, inside one of the derelict apartments, the fizz and hiss of water dripping onto live wires could be heard. Bill paused at an open door on the seventeenth floor, nudging it slowly and soundlessly open. Both hid behind the wall as the room inside yawned into view. Outside, the sun was starting to set over West Belfast and the sparks from the faulty wires hanging from the ceiling light up like so many fireflies.

"We cut the electrics," Harry said, low.

"And they restored it," replied Bill, matter of factly. "Well, that rules out the lift shaft."

They descended to the sixteenth floor in a thickening darkness. Every step of the way, the lower they went, the further they travelled into their enemy's trap. Harry's mind raced, despite his best efforts, conjuring all forms of graphic, brutal end that awaited them between the sixteenth and ground floor. It could come at any moment. It could be waiting around any door, from behind every corner. Harry could feel his flesh crawl with every small distant noise. Even if they could see down the stairwell, the terrorists hunting them wouldn't be so stupid as to make their presence known.

So he and Bill continued. Slowly inching their way downwards, listening out for a footfall that was not their own. Listening for the cold steel click of a gun being cocked and the bullet sliding into place. Bill led the way, with Harry looking back over his shoulder every five seconds, waiting for the trap to be sprung at any moment.

It came on the fifteenth floor.

The passageway outside the two derelict flats suddenly flashed brilliant white as an assault rifle rattled off its stuttering discharge. The noise of it shattering the eerie silence as an elbow violently caught Harry in the jaw, sending him reeling backwards. But Bill returned fire and with a single shot of his handgun, the paramilitary with the assault rifle fell silent and dead on the landing floor. The sporadic lighting blinked down on his prone form, blood spilling from the hole in his head.

"Where's the other?" Harry demanded through a throbbing jaw. "The one who hit me."

Bill's reply was short and terse. "That was me. Sorry."

Without further preamble, Bill jumped the last few steps down to the landing and knelt beside the corpse. Grabbing his ankles, he hoisted the body up and over the railings, letting the corpse fall down and down the echoing stairwell. "Send him back to his friends downstairs," he said, gruffly.

Harry's heartbeat was still racing; adrenaline coursing through his veins as he listened for the sickening crunch of the dead man connecting with the ground floor. It was almost satisfying as it resounded through the building. The pain left his jaw, but he could still taste blood on his tongue. Ignoring it, he and Bill set off again, fully aware there would be many more hidden throughout the tower and lying in wait.

Somewhere overhead, a door slammed shut. Loud music began playing in another apartment, before shutting off as suddenly as it began. Then distant voices could be heard, somewhere in the opaque spaces that lay behind the doors. Sudden, deliberate noises both near and far. Slowly, like cats pawing at broken-winged birds, the enemy was closing in on them. Ever decreasing circles; closer and closer. Harry's heart was pounding, ears full of the rushing blood. It was like moving through a living nightmare. He could almost feel their breath on the back of his neck as his imagination started to collaborate with the IRA, making things even worse for him.

"They're playing with us," he said, voice tremulous now. "We're giving them sport."

He almost screamed aloud as a hand closed swiftly over his wrist, holding it tight. But it was only Bill. Harry could see only the whites of his dark grey eyes now, over-bright and reflecting a good share of the panic he felt.

"We're on the thirteenth floor now," he whispered, leaning close to Harry's ear. "We're almost half-way there."

In that instant, Harry knew it was a well-intended lie. Getting out of the tower was only half the battle. The next half was getting safely back to their vehicles and off the Falls Road. They were caught in a net of the IRA's making and that net was ten miles wide and ten miles long. Already, inwardly, Harry had resigned himself to taking as many of the bastards down with him before he was inevitably taken care of himself.

"How many bullets have you got left?" he asked Bill as they reached the landing of the thirteenth floor.

Bill replied with a shrug. "However many we have, we must hold our nerve and not fire at every little thing. I almost shot a rat back there; a waste of a bullet with these bastards all around us."

Harry could only admire the way Bill was holding his own nerve. He seemed almost cool and collected as he travelled towards his own death. But as they passed the apartments on the thirteenth floor, Bill stopped suddenly and tried one of the doors. It was locked from the outside, meaning no one at all had entered it since the last tenant left. He stepped back and kicked in the door, sending it crashing against the back wall. Before Harry could even form an appropriate expletive, Bill shoved him inside.

In there, the light was better and the window was open, letting in a cool breeze. It was only there that Harry realised they were both sweating like pigs in a slaughter house.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

But Bill only grabbed his shoulders, getting his attention.

"Listen, chances are we're both fucked, but…" he said, urgently before pausing and drawing a deep breath. "If by any small chance you get out of this alive, would you… would you look out for her?"

Just for a brief moment, Bill's steel resolve wilted into something so tender it hurt to see.

"Debs, I mean," he said, as though Harry needed the clarification. "And the baby. Tell her to kiss the baby for me and give him that stuffed giraffe toy I got from Belfast Zoo."

It was about six feet tall, if Harry's estimates were correct. But Bill hadn't been able to resist it. He almost laughed at the memory.

"And for fuck's sake, make sure he grows up to be a good, honest Liverpool supporter. If he so much as looks at a Man United jersey I'll come back and haunt you-"

"Bill!" Harry cut in, forcing him to stop. "Stop. They heard you kicking that door in, they are coming for us now."

He nodded. "I know. But I need you to do something."

"Anything," Harry said.

"I need you to stay here and guard this apartment with your life," he said. "We can't go out there, even if we do make it to the ground floor. So we need to establish a clean base here. If anyone comes, defend it and kill them. Okay?"

Harry was far from okay. "Where are you going?"

"You saw that lone gunman on the fifteenth floor," he reminded Harry. "He was alone. There will probably be another lone gunman waiting a few floors down. I'm going to take the fucker alive and, with a gun to his head, force the next one we encounter to negotiate-"

"We can both do it!" Harry interjected, frantically.

"No," Bill was adamant. "I'm going to buy breathing space by telling them you're already dead; killed in that last shoot out, understand?"

There was so many flaws in that plan Harry could use it to strain pasta. "And if I have to shoot an intruder, what then? They'll hear it."

"I'll just say it's another of their men panicking and firing at a rat, or something," he explained. "I almost did it myself."

Harry could not bring himself to agree. But Bill nudged him further into the apartment and backed away, closing the door almost silently behind him. His footsteps could not be heard as he descended deeper into the tower block. Meanwhile, Harry concealed himself in the bathroom, the gun shaking in his trembling hands. Sick with fear and tension, he kept it trained on the door, listening for the slightest noise that could have had a human source. He willed himself to move, to catch Bill up and take on this suicidal mission together. To go out together. But the more he willed himself to move, the more he seemed to take root there. Stranded, alone.

Minutes ticked by. Minutes that bled into hours. If he looked at the base of the bathroom door, he could see the sliver of pale light fading into a slow, agonising darkness. There was only a silence. A crushing, nerve-shredding silence followed closely by a yawning chasm of nothingness. A void into which all his fear and sickening imaginings were relentless sucked.

In the end, Harry emerged at dawn. Walking slowly down the stairs, calling out to anyone. Even instant death would be preferable to being left hanging on like this. Every floor was empty. Every room silent and cold as the crypt. Everyone was simply gone. He emerged blinking and dazed into the pallid morning light. Stepping out into a world equally as silent and empty as the Tower block he had just left. Harry felt like the last man alive on earth.

* * *

Will's body was slick with a cold sweat by the time Harry finished talking. He didn't realise it, but he had been leaning further and further across the table, hanging on every word spoken. Once he did notice, he sat back quickly. The older man was pale now, his dark green eyes furtive and clouded by residual fear that still haunted him. But Harry kept his silence, Will realised the next part he was waiting for was not coming.

"But, then what?" he asked, bewildered.

Harry looked back at him, questioningly. "I wasn't there when your father was killed, Will. I was only there when he was abducted."

"So, when you got out of the Divis Flats you just went home?" he asked, disbelievingly.

"Of course not!" he retorted. "I finally got the backup team and a search was mounted immediately. The whole Unit was searching; assets were being grilled in warehouses up and down the Province. But we didn't know anything until two weeks later, when his body was returned."

Will felt as if he was being suspended over a cliff edge by one ankle. He was just hanging there, waiting for information that he now realised would not come. Those final few days, those all important final hours, were slipping away from him.

"There must be a record of what they did to him," he said, voice shaking. "Photos-"

"No," Harry cut over him. "Absolutely not!"

Lied to, again. His temper snapped. "You mean there are, but you won't let me see them!"

"Of course I won't!" Harry retorted, exasperated. "You have pictures of your father, Will. You remember him like that because those last images will be seared onto your mind until the day you die."

Will pushed back his chair and got to his feet in agitation. "I am not a child who needs protecting, Sir Harry!"

"Mister Crombie," it was Valentina who spoke. The Interlocutor that everyone had forgotten existed. Seeing her calm, placid face looking up at him and imploring him to calm down had the desired effect. "Please sit down. Sir Harry has given you very valid reasons for not disclosing those photographs."

Instantly, he resumed his seat and was abashed enough by his outburst to apologise instantly.

"I'm sorry, Sir Harry. I realise this is hard for you," he said, meaning it. "The last thing I want to do is tighten the thumbscrews on you by pressuring for even more. It's just… just everything. I need as much as I can get."

That seemed to satisfy Valentina. But Harry looked almost apologetic himself.

"And I have given you all I can, at this stage," he said, after gathering his own thoughts. "Your father was held for two weeks. He was tortured. Grotesquely."

Will's laboured breathing eased. But before he could reply, a mobile phone rang shrilly, cutting through the tension that was slowly ebbing anyway. All eyes in the room fell on Ruth, who turned scarlet with embarrassment.

"Uhm," she said, pointing to her bag where the phone still rang. "I'm really sorry, but I have to take this call-"

"Get on with it then," Harry snapped at her.

"Yeah, er, right," she stammered, rushing from the room.

Harry turned back to Will with a look of profound regret in his eyes. "I am very sorry about that. It must be from the Grid otherwise she would have had it switched off."

"I don't mind, Sir Harry," Will assured him. "But, I think it's a sign we've done enough for one day."

Now Harry was visibly relieved. "I quite agree. Come down the pub with us and we'll get a few rounds in."

It was the best idea he had heard all day. But, as he left with Harry and Ruth, the thought occurred to him that he should pay Belfast a visit. The city itself may hold the key with which he could lock this door forever.

* * *

The bar was mercifully quiet. Just the flat cap and whippet brigade, nursing pints in a quiet, soothing lounge bar. Harry cast a wary eye over them all, before easily deeming it safe. While he waited to be served, Ruth came over to join him leaving Will and Catherine sitting together and chatting away. Briefly, she looked back over her shoulder before turning to him with a broad smile.

"They seem to be getting on really rather well,," she said, with an unmistakable hint of optimism in her tone.

Harry laughed. "You're incorrigible, Ruth. Anyway, what was that phone call about? Anything I need to know?"

Suddenly, she turned serious. "I had Ros and Lucas check out Brendan McLoan for you."

He felt a tremor of distaste mingled with apprehension pass through him. "And?"

"He's still alive and a known member of the Continuity IRA; Lucas and Ros have all his personal information," she whispered, standing on tip toes and leaning close to his ear. Then, she took him by the elbow and steered him into the Lady's toilets nearby. "What do you want to do about it?"

Harry was trying to figure out what it was Ruth wanted to hear. For a long moment, he maintained his silence. A hundred thoughts crashing through his head. He could feel himself being pulled this way and that. Brendan McLoan who not only sold him and Bill out for a seat on the Army Council, but was still an active terrorist in the ranks of the Dissidents. Unrepentant; unreformed, free to do it all again.

"While we were in the taxi Will said he wanted to go to Belfast and try to trace his father's last journey," said Ruth. "I thought you might want to go with him and pay a visit to an old friend."

A knowing smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. But Harry suddenly felt himself descending into a state of empty calmness. "Yes," he replied. "I think I might go with him."

Their eyes met, and Harry slowly wrapped his arms around her, holding her close before kissing her deeply. His hands raked her hair, pulling it out of its ponytail. The silver slide landed in a sink with a soft clatter, but neither of them paid it any heed. When they parted, her lipstick was smudged, but her wide blue eyes were clear and focused.

"I love you," she said. "So stay safe over there."

He managed to raise a pained smile. "I'll come home, I promise."

* * *

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	10. I Can't Believe It's Not the IRA

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* * *

**Chapter Ten: I Can't Believe It's Not the IRA  
**

"You're still awake." It wasn't a question. Harry knew Ruth was still with him, bodily and consciously. But the hour was late. Still dark, but with dawn fast approaching. He himself had been slipping in and out of slumber. What few snatched moments of sleep he did get, brought with them memories of the days between Bill's abduction and his remains being dumped at the barracks front gates.

Instead of an answer, Ruth turned over in bed so that she was facing him. Alert and keen-eyed, he wondered whether she had slept at all. Now that his anger and frustration had subsided, he felt almost ashamed at having dumped the corpse of his own personal history at her feet. Worse, he almost let it tear them apart. Again. But when he looked in her eyes, he saw no recrimination there. Nor the judgement he so feared. There was just a mutual, unspoken, understanding that this was not the end.

"All I want now is," she began, then faltered. "All I need is a message, for you to tell me when it's done."

Beneath the blankets, his hand slid up to her hips and rested there. "Yes," he promised her. There was no talk of her coming with him. "I'll keep you informed."

"Then it'll be over," she added.

"I rather think it will be," he agreed.

What more could they possibly do to each other that hadn't already been done a thousand times? Truth and reconciliation was all well and good, but sometimes the wounds were too deep to heal. In those instances, he knew there was only one option left. It was either that, or let the wound suppurate again and again. Never healing, only slipping into an uneasy remission before the cycle starts again. A gift that keeps on giving.

"Did talking to Will help at all?" she asked.

"Yes."

It was no miracle cure, but he had to admit it felt better. Over thirty years spent harbouring a painful secret, carrying it around, nursing its slow acting poison had been purged in the course of one afternoon. But still a man of few soul-bearing words, he could think of no better answer than just 'yes'. In reality, he felt as though he had only just managed to grab an overhanging tree branch while be swept down a river. Well now that particular storm had quelled into an uneasy peace of mind.

"I never intended for you to take the blame," he said, at last. Sorry was always the hardest of words. "Nor the emotional fallout of it all."

"It's all right," she answered. "It'll all be over soon. That's all that matters now."

Maybe each act of revenge further corrodes the soul. But Harry was willing to take the chance. He raised a pained smile and kissed her full on the lips. He wasn't leaving until late in the evening, an overnight ferry from Liverpool with Will. The exact same journey he had undertaken with Bill, all those long years ago. Ros and Lucas had already created legends for them both: building workers visiting Belfast to help plan the construction of a new shopping arcade in the city centre. Just in case anyone in officialdom asks, which was unlikely in the new climate of peace and reconciliation.

Ruth rolled over on to her back, sighing heavily. "I can't believe that bastard McLoan is still out there and still trying to wage war." Instantly, she seemed to regret it. "I'm sorry; it's not for me to be all bloody indignant."

"But you're right," he was quick to assure her. But he soon lapsed into his own thoughts, trying to make sense of it all. "Maybe he doesn't know how to not wage war? Maybe he's been doing this for so long now that he doesn't know any other way. It'd be like me just stopping being a spy and becoming a nursery school teacher, or something. It'd be like teaching a fish to drive. And violence is addictive but it's not like smoking. You can't just nip down a chemist and get some violence patches to help wean you off it."

"It's not for us to psychoanalyse the man, Harry," said Ruth. "Dissident Republicans are mainly active in areas of community policing and racketeering. It's not even ideological any more. It's just money, power and control. Do people like McLoan even remember why the war began in the first place? Have they forgotten that their country is divided?"

Harry stifled a laugh at 'community policing'. Blasting the kneecaps off kids who smoke a little weed or make a little too much noise while out on the town. That sort of community policing. Once upon a time; long, long ago, he used to listen to Sinn Fein banging on about the evils of the forces of occupation and the British state, using it to justify acts of terror that would shame the devil itself. Two wrongs don't make a right, but what about three or four or five? It used to make him want to vomit. Now it was all bloodshed without the pretence of ideology. At least they were honest. At least they weren't at a negotiating table and shaking you by the hand while pointing a gun at your head with the other. But the Dissidents were not wanted. They were not supported, not even by those they claimed to represent. They had taken it upon themselves to continue a war the people on all sides no longer had the heart for. Self-appointed and acting as judge, jury and executioner. Peace and reconciliation was all very well, when it was what all sides wanted. But Brendan McLoan and his ilk didn't want that and he had made his choice. As Harry now made his.

"Do you think I'm a coward?" he asked.

Ruth's breath hitched in her throat. A gesture that seemed borne of surprise.

"Why on earth would I think that?"

"Because I let Bill go," he explained. "I watched him walk into the jaws of a lion, and cowered in a flat for the best part of a day. I could have gone out there. I could have fought, like he fought. But I didn't. He walked away and vanished. In the end, he was just gone. There was no blazing shoot-out, no Butch Cassidy moment. He was just … taken away. I never even saw them leave."

He heard no car engines, nor voices. Only the rush of his own blood pumping through his veins. Fear and adrenaline. But mostly fear. Followed by guilt. An all-consuming guilt that crusted over his every thought, fuelled his every fear and dictated his every decision since then.

"The thing is, Harry, Bill took that decision out of your hands," she said, after a long pause. "He didn't give you a choice. From the moment he decided to try and negotiate, he seems to have also decided that you would not be a part of those negotiations. In fact, if I recall your words rightly, he was using your supposed death at their hands as leverage. Sort of like him walking up to them and saying: _'okay lads, you killed my colleague, now we're even so let's talk.' _It was always a longshot, but it could have worked. The Provisional IRA were never beyond reason and they were always open to talks. Christ, Harry, the British Government started talking to them back in 1972."

She was always a sensible woman.

"But I was so afraid-"

"Of course you were," she cut over him. "Any human being would be. Being afraid doesn't make you a coward. If you had gone charging after Bill you both would have been killed instantly. If I was in Bill's place, I would have banked on negotiations with the gunmen and feeding them half-truthful intel to play for time and build up a rapport. In the meantime, you who were still both alive and at liberty, would raise the alarm and organise the search and rescue team. Which is what you did. You did what he needed you to do and you didn't fail, you just ran out of time."

"Running out of time is still a failure," he countered. "Worse, it cost Bill his life."

The mattress dipped as Ruth shifted her position, then she wrapped her arms around him. For a long moment, she simply held him.

"I'm not contradicting you," she said. "I'm not arguing for the sake of being obstinate. But you did everything that was in your power to do. No one can ask for more than that."

He wasn't psychic. He had no way of telling where McLoan and the IRA had taken Bill. Not with all their rural hideouts scattered from the glens of Antrim to the killing fields of South Armagh. It was like the proverbial needle in a haystack. But the feelings and sadness lingered on, even if beginning to grow less potent.

* * *

That afternoon, the atmosphere in the meeting room was calm. Ros and Lucas sat facing each other from opposite sides of the table, while Ruth squeezed in beside Harry at the end. No one else was involved. No one else needed to be dragged into Harry's own past. But he could see the rest of the team passing back and forth outside, each person absorbed in their own work and paying them little heed. It was probably for the best.

On the table, between Ros and Lucas, a stack of papers had been fanned out. An empty box was sat beside Lucas's elbow and he was currently absorbed in an old report that he'd unearthed in the paper archive. Harry watched his brow furrow as he focused on the small typing, his free hand covering his mouth. Eventually, he passed it over to Harry.

"The La Mon Hotel bombing," he said, keeping his voice low. "You were right, Harry, McLoan was involved. But it was us who covered it up. What do you want us to do about it?"

"We covered it up only because we thought McLoan was providing information for us," he answered. "If it ever came out that enemy bombers were being protected, it could cause a scandal. If it ever came out that we protected enemy bombers who were actually double-crossing us, it could tear our organisation apart." He paused and held up the bombing reporting for all three of them to see. "I want this destroyed while I'm away dealing with McLoan."

That was the problem with all informers, really. Most of them came singing to MI5 because they had become disillusioned with whatever organisation they represented. They had their own axes to grind and they were playing you as much, and as fluently, as you were playing them. They were all just pieces on a board, being moved according to the whims and caprices of the player. The IRA were no different. McLoan came to them because he felt over-looked and under-appreciated by the IRA. The IRA made him a better offer.

"Harry, if the IRA…" said Ros, trailing off and scowling as she struggled to recall some minor detail. "Sorry, what IRA is it he's a member of now? The Real IRA, the Continuity IRA, I Can't Believe It's not the IRA or whatever the fuck they're calling themselves these days. If they knew McLoan had been an informer – for whatever reason and however long ago – they would do this job for you. All we have to do is make sure they find out."

"That isn't the point," he answered, flatly. "This is between me and him."

"Does he think you're still dead?" asked Ruth.

Harry hadn't even considered that. The question jolted him and he turned to look at her. "I hope so."

Lucas laughed drily. "The element of surprise, Harry. I like it."

Even Ruth smiled. "He probably won't recognise you, so make sure you jog his memory before …" she trailed off, considering how best to phrase it. "Before _it_ is done."

He reached over and covered her hand with his own. "Oh, I will. Don't you worry about that."

"Well then," said Ros, once more exerting her authority. "We've arranged a meetup for tomorrow night, ten pm at the East Belfast docks, close to where you disembark at the sea terminal. He thinks you're going there to discuss drug imports from the East End of London, seeing as that seems to be their main source of income these days. From there, it's up to you."

Before Harry could respond, Lucas cut in. "I'm still not happy about you going in alone, Harry. What if something goes wrong?"

Harry shrugged. "Then it goes wrong and no one else but me gets hurt."

Beside him, Ruth suppressed a shiver and distracted herself by sweeping the papers into a haphazard stack. Harry caught it from the corner of his eye, but it did not deter him. Deep down, he knew she understood. But it was hard for her and he knew he would have some serious making up to do once he returned. His hand found hers and brought it to a standstill again. "It'll be all right," he whispered, so that only she could hear. For all he was worth, he tried to reinforce the message with a smile.

Before he left that evening, Lucas was waiting for him by the pods. His jacket over his shoulder, ready to go. Harry met his eye, wondering why he hadn't followed Ros and the others.

"Lucas," he greeted his Senior Case Officer. "Still here?"

"Nothing gets past you," he replied, drily. He made no move, even as Harry caught him up. "Are you sure you're okay to do this alone? I don't mind catching a flight and giving you some back up. Same goes for Ros. We've already talked about this."

"That's very kind of you both," he answered, genuinely touched by the offer. "But, as you know, there are some old scores that can only be settled the old fashioned way."

He had not meant to drag the John Bateman and Vaughn Edwards scandal up again. But it was the closest comparison Harry could find. And he knew Lucas, of all people, would understand what it was to have your past follow you home like a flea-bitten, stray dog.

"At least let me offer you some advice, then," said Lucas, setting off for the pods. "Just shoot the bastard. No messing around, no trips down memory lane. Just give him the bullet and get back home."

Harry leaned in close to Lucas, just as they came to a parting of the ways. "I would," he said. "But that's more than the bastard deserves."

Lucas raised a pained smile. "Good luck, Harry."

* * *

When Will first conceived the idea of travelling to Northern Ireland, he took it for granted that a flight would be involved. An hour in the air from Heathrow and they'd be on Irish soil before they knew it. Alas, Sir Harry had other ideas. Ideas that struck him as odd. But as he made his way to the deck of the ship and looked out over the approaching sea, he had to admit it was different. He lit a cigarette and stood by the cold steel rails, eroded by sea spray and salt, breathing in the nicotine and clean air. It was, he recalled, the precise same journey that his father and Harry took, all those years ago.

If he looked back, the Albert Docks had vanished from sight. If he looked ahead, there was only the vast expanse of shivering seas. But the night was calm and silent. The vessel barely rocked and there wasn't even a breeze to help speed their journey along. But it was the calmest he had been since his mother died. Out there, drifting through a dark and empty expanse of water seemed to wash his mind clean. If he looked up, the stars spread out in the night skies. Away from the scourge of light pollution, he could see every last one of them. He looked for the biggest and brightest of them all, recalling the words of an old school teacher. They shine like that when they're about to implode and open up a brand new black hole. Most of the stars you're seeing now are already dead. The universe is infinite, but life is not.

He drew on his cigarette and leaned over the rails. The ship's prow cut through the small swells, churning up a pale foam in its wake. He saw no fish big or small, much to his dismay. Four hours into the voyage, they rounded the north coast of the Isle of Man. They saw distant street lights twinkling along its northern shores where promenades followed the beaches. He didn't even realise the tiny Island was inhabited.

"Your father made that mistake, too," said Harry, when Will pointed it out to him.

Will laughed, imagining his father stood where he stood, talking to the same man, only thirty or so years younger. "Did my father make a lot of mistakes?"

Harry leaned against the railings, looking out over the seas with a whiskey in his hands. "No more than anyone else, I don't think. How do you mean?"

Will shrugged, not entirely sure what he meant himself. "All my life people have skirted around the issue of how Dad died," he explained. "It was built up into this big thing. I was so obsessed with finding out the truth of his death that I forgot about the truth of his life."

It hit him as he lay in bed on the night of the Truth and Reconciliation talks. All his adult life he had squirrelled around for information about the end of Bill Crombie's life, while Bill Crombie the living, breathing human being had slipped past unnoticed and neglected. Naturally, he had projected idealised father figures on to the man when he was a child. But that had no more been the truth than had his death defined his life. It was only then that Will realised there was more to his father than being tortured and murdered and he hadn't asked Harry about any of that.

"I feel so foolish asking," he admitted. "But what was he like? Who was he? I don't know, Sir Harry. I feel like I don't know anything about him."

Harry looked contemplative. "Back at the talks, you wanted to see pictures of your father's body. Do you understand now why I wouldn't let you see them? That would be all you knew of him."

The reminder brought on a fresh wave of guilt. "I hadn't meant to upset you, Sir Harry."

But Harry waved a dismissive hand. "Don't. You didn't; I was more worried about the effect it would have on you. Bill and I grew up together. From early childhood we played together, we went to school and university together. We drank and went searching for girls together. When we get to Belfast, there's someone I need to see. When that is done, you and I will go to the Crown Liquor Saloon and get blind drunk. There, I will tell you every little thing about your father, the man that he was. I would now, but here on this ship it's freezing cold and we're too sober."

Will opted not to pry into the mystery meeting, but it piqued his curiosity nonetheless. "It sounds like my Dad was quite rash, actually. To have done what he did."

Harry looked surprised at his assessment, but soon settled again. "That's one way of looking at it. But now, looking back, I think he was extremely brave. He knew we were going to die unless something was done. We had intel that could have cost a lot more lives, all locked in our heads. Your father took ownership of the situation and minimised the collateral damage as best he could in the circumstances he found himself in. It was something my wife said to me last night that made me realise what Bill was probably doing and he sacrificed himself to protect others, myself included. I would have done the same for him, had I had that idea first."

Will listened while watching the distant lights of Belfast harbour drawing closer. It was too dark to see much of the land itself, but he knew they were heading into the mouth of the lough. It felt like he was reaching the last leg of a long and dangerous journey.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading and apologies for the late update. Reviews would be lovely, if you have a minute. **


	11. Bury the Hatchet

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story. It means a lot. Thank you. **

* * *

**Chapter Eleven: Bury the Hatchet**

The Divis Flats stood starkly against the clear summer skies, throwing their long dark shadows over the Falls Road. Will had to crane his neck to see the top of them, shielding his eyes from the sun. CCTV cameras stood guard over the front entrance, watching the silent lobby. Up several floors someone had draped a flag the size of a bedsheet over the balcony railings. One half Irish tricolour, the other half the flag of the Palestinian state. A show of solidarity with another people under siege in a land far from Belfast. Others stuck to more conventional laundry, drying in the sun.

Around the flats, life on the Falls continued. No one even looked at Will and Harry as they surveyed the scene. A shopping centre was packed with afternoon shoppers; the Westlink roared with heavy traffic headed south to Dublin and West to Derry and Donegal. There was nothing left of the British military presence save for the markers commemorating the civilian dead. A large Celtic cross of black marble marked the spot where five members of the public were shot dead by British paratroopers. Small white flowers wilted in the heat at the foot of the memorial. Other than that, there was nothing.

Will felt no connection, nor gravitational pull towards the towers. There was nothing of his father here. He wondered to himself whether he truly expected to feel anything at all. But there it was: the place where his father was last seen alive.

"We can't hang around too long," Harry cautioned him.

Jolted out of his reverie, Will turned quickly to face him. "I know. I'm sorry." He shook his head, starting to walk away. "There's nothing to see anyway."

The flats his father had been abducted from had been demolished not long after. These he was studying now were merely the upgraded replacements. Completed in 1979, they were Belfast City Council's long over-due first measure to try and resolve the Catholic's chronic housing shortage. A remedy to the families of up to twenty sharing a two bed house barely fit for a dog.

"Everything is in the same place, though," said Harry, looking back over his shoulder as they left the scene. "I mean, the doors were in the same place and the driveway is the same. I remember this whole road and some of the buildings."

They had passed the Felon's Club in their hire car as they came down via Andersonstown. These days, it was just a pub that anyone could drink in. Anyone who wasn't English, of course. Some things hadn't changed, and Will knew it was risky for Harry to be lingering in this part of town. Nor could they speak openly. When Harry described something to him, he did so in hushed tones and leaving blanks where names and dates should have been. Will himself did not feel especially threatened, but he was conscious of being out of place. Earlier, he had nipped into a corner shop on the Lower Falls to buy cigarettes and thought twice before speaking and revealing his London accent. But it was too late to back out and, in any case, the shopkeeper paid no heed and merely chatted enthusiastically about the weather while searching for Will's brand. Summer, it seemed, was their favourite day of the year in Northern Ireland as much as it was in England.

They returned to their hire car in the parking lot of the Kennedy Centre. A bustling shopping place that attracted people from all over the city, rather than just the Catholic west. Back in the day, Harry told him, it wouldn't have been safe for outsiders to cross the divides. Will drove, finding his way back into the city centre, much more neutral ground where they could finally talk openly in a place free of open political gestures. What surprised him most was how small it was. Everything was so close together, the whole city pedestrianised and compact that when things were bad, these sworn enemies must have co-existed cheek by jowl.

After a ten minute drive, Will navigated the incredibly fussy one way system that led round the city hall, desperately in search of somewhere to park. Harry had unfolded a map of the city and the satnav was barking computer generated commands at him, but he ignored them both. Following the street signs eventually led Will somewhere completely unknown and unexpected on the opposite side of town. Still, it was habited and developed. It would have to do.

"How the hell did we get here?" asked Harry, peering out of the passenger window.

Will shrugged. "Buggered if I know. But here we are."

They parked beside Belfast lough after picking up sandwiches from a bakery. Remaining in the car while they ate, they could just see ships sailing out into the calm seas. Passenger ships destined for Scotland and Liverpool; Tall Ships arriving for the annual races and great merchant ships bound for god knows where. Even small fishing boats bobbed on the rippling tides. A surprisingly bustling port for such an out of the way city.

"I didn't think it would all be gone," said Will, at length. "I mean, every trace of what happened here. It's like it never was."

"I did try to tell you," replied Harry. "You can't expect people to live in an old war museum. They want to move on and, not forget what happened, but have a new future."

"And I don't blame them for that," he was quick to point out. "God knows, no one can blame them for that."

He paused, growing solemn as he gazed off into the distance. His eye was trained a tall ship, but he wasn't really seeing it anymore. It was just something to look at. Inwardly, he went over his reasons for being there again. It seemed he was chasing answers that he'd never find. Looking for a sense of closure that kept slipping his grasp.

"You're focusing on his death again, aren't you," Harry wryly observed.

Will sighed heavily. "I suppose I am."

"You said it yourself, there's so much more to Bill than that. If you're looking for him, this is the last place you should be," said Harry. "You need to be where we grew up, where he had his first kiss, where he got laid for the first time – which was on the Moore at the back of my Granny's old house, in case you were wondering."

Torn between recoiling and laughter, Will's sense of humour won the moment and laughed. "Yeah, I needed to know that," he said, still smiling. But then, he turned serious again. "So, why did you come here?"

Harry turned contemplative. "Two reasons, I suppose. One: you're every bit as pig-headed as your father was and you were not to be dissuaded. Someone had to make sure you stayed safe over here. Two: for me. I lived through it. Coming here again, after so long … well, it helps to bury that hatchet, doesn't it."

Will looked from the lough to Harry again. "Depends where you're burying it, I suppose. In the ground or in someone's face."

It was meant as a joke, but the old Spook wasn't laughing. He turned to Will with a calculated look of determination in his hazel eyes. "I'm still glad you came here, by the way. There's someone I want you to meet tonight."

Curious, Will's brow creased. "Who?"

"Do you remember the cover story I insisted you learn?"

"Yes," he replied, nodding.

"Good. Look over it again when we get back to the Europa. I want you to have it all off by heart. Understand?"

The atmosphere had turned serious, a shift in temperature that made Will's mouth run dry. "Sure," he said, quietly. "But who is it?"

"Someone who will help you get over this death fixation you have," he replied, vaguely. "But understand this: you do as I say. If I tell you to run, you run. You don't speak at all, unless absolutely necessary. I'll tell you to leave before the end and I want you to leave without question. When you go, wait for me in the car. I need a moment alone with this man."

_Bury the hatchet_, he thought again, _bury it in their face_. "I'll do everything you say, I promise."

The moment passed and normality crept back in. Harry even looked relaxed again as he finished off his lunch. Will did the same, curious and nervous in equal measure. Dimly aware, as he was, that they were going beyond answering questions; they were settling old scores.

* * *

"Don't be nervous," Harry said, pulling on a nice pair of black leather gloves. He hadn't used these ones since the last Home Secretary turned out to be a bastard. Once done, he straightened his tie and checked his reflection in the wing mirror of their hire car. An especially awful purple Nissan. Meanwhile, Will continued to bite his lower lip. His gaze flitted from the road to the pavement, bright streetlamps reflected in his wide, dark irises.

The height of a northern summer, it hadn't grown dark until long past ten pm, but night did eventually settle. As soon as it did, Harry took over driving duties just to keep his mind occupied on something other than Brendan McLoan. He took a circuitous route through Belfast's meandering docklands, plagued with second thoughts about brining Will along. But, of them both, it was he who needed to hear this the most and this really was his last chance. If he didn't do as he was told, he'd kick him.

"Right, Harry," said Will. "We're building contractors normally based in Liverpool. I live in Speke, close to the John Lennon Airport. You're close to the Albert Docks. Through those channels we're shipping building supplies to companies in Northern Ireland and drugs, on the side, to Brendan McLoan's paramilitary friends via those same routes."

Harry smiled. "Very good. Clearly, we're not Liverpudlians. How long have we been based there?"

"Only two years now," he parroted. "We're still getting out business off the ground. Before that, we were based in Southampton, but we weren't getting enough business from there. So we moved north."

Harry continued to be pleased. "And I am?"

"You're my Uncle Ivan. Vanya, to your friends. Uncle Vanya."

"And you are?"

"Your nephew, Sean. Your sister, Eileen, was my mother but she died when I was fourteen. My parents were divorced, so you looked after me until I finished school, then gave me a job in your building firm."

"Perfect. But the rules remain the same: you don't talk at all unless absolutely necessary. If you forget, keep it vague," said Harry, going through it all again. "And don't forget to sound natural. You're parroting it off like a schoolboy reciting Shakespeare. You don't have to use my exact words."

"Sorry," said Will. "I'll keep it conversational then. But only if I must."

It was morally and professionally wrong, but needs must. Bill would have done the same for Catherine, he knew. The only difference was, he probably would have done it a lot sooner. When he reached the spot, Harry pulled the car up in the shadow of a freight container. No one used this part of the docks. It was set too far from the city for the dog walkers and the nearby housing estate was sealed off by a large wall. Otherwise, there was only the water. Harry could see the moon reflecting the restless surface, the balmy air heavy with its scent. Before he got out of the car, he turned to Will for one final time.

"If you're having second thoughts, now is the time to back out," he said. "No one would think less of you if you did."

"No," Will was adamant. "No, I need this."

His gun was in the glove compartment. Before getting out of the car, he stripped the weapon down and double checked every mechanism on it. Unloaded, he reloaded it again and slipped the rest of his ammunition into the pocket of his overcoat. He slipped the silencer on but was unable to test it without wasting a precious bullet, so he put his faith alone in it. Will watched his every move as though transfixed.

"You're going to kill him no matter what?" he asked.

Harry looked up and met his gaze. "Does that disturb you?"

"It worries me," he admitted. "What if he gets to you first?"

"He won't, and you'll be long gone by that time," he said. "When I say, you get in the car and drive away. I'll call you when it's done. I'm not having you witness it."

Almost immediately, he realised he had said the wrong thing. Will's hackles rose.

"Why? You can trust me; I won't say anything-"

"It's not that!" Harry cut in. "You're not an MI5 Officer, Will. You shouldn't be here at all."

Strictly speaking, murder was still illegal. Even for MI5 Officers, including the high up ones. But it was nothing they hadn't done a hundred times and more. This man was a threat to British national security and it was Harry's job, and his alone, to circumvent it. However, Will settled back down again and made no further protest. Together, they stepped out of the car and headed towards a warehouse close to the water's edge, just off a tarmac footpath. If Harry looked left, he could see the car parked under a bridge. A motorway flyover, to be precise. The traffic sped overhead so fast not a single motorist would see anything happening below, even if they did bother to look.

"He's coming alone, isn't he?" Will asked.

"Those are the instructions we gave him," Harry confirmed. "If he's with people, the whole thing is off and we walk away before he even gets here. Understand?"

Will nodded, sticking his hands deep into his pockets. He had lost weight since Harry first met him, he was sure of it. For a moment, he just watched the younger man, shivering in the night air. Ghostly pale in the moonlight, his dark hair was a mess of unruly curls. Dark eyes made even darker in the poor light. The only physical difference between him and his father was height. Bill was a good few inches taller than Harry, but Will was at least two inches shorter. Will turned his back on the soft wind and lit a cigarette. A nervous cigarette rather than one that was actually craved. Something to keep him busy. Somewhere, deep in Harry's consciousness, he acknowledged the fact that he was using the younger man. Using him as bait to lure McLoan into a trap. Would McLoan recognise him after all these years? He couldn't guess. But Will was Bill frozen in time, propelled untouched through the decades. For reassurance, he touched the holster of the gun, feeling its bulk resting against his ribs. Will would not be harmed. Tonight, the wheel of history would be kicked squarely in the spokes, stopped for good.

"Will," he said, getting his attention just as headlamps swerved into the docks. "Get behind this wall. Stay out of sight until I give the sign."

Will also noted the lights and ducked to the side of the warehouse. It was a warehouse actually owned by MI5, from back in the dark old days, but never used. Malcolm Wynne Jones had procured its use for them, along with Ruth. On paper, it was owned by some fictional haulage company based in London.

By the time the newcomer was walking down the path, Will had secreted himself away. Hidden by overhanging bracken from the roadside verge, he was concealed from view from the opposite direction. McLoan would not see him. Meanwhile, Harry stepped out into the path, making himself clearly visible to McLoan.

"Brendan, is it?" he asked, stepping forward and extending one hand.

"Aye, it is," the man replied, also reaching out to shake hands. "You must be Ivan?"

"So it is," Harry replied. "You'll have to excuse our surroundings here, we're just getting on our feet in Belfast. Our warehouse is still bare."

Harry removed the keys from his coat pocket, making a show of searching for the right one.

"Aye, no worries mate," said McLoan. "It's not a great time to be setting up is it, what with all the financial troubles?"

Harry laughed as he swung open the metal door and fumbled for the light switch. "Too true. Hence our new side line."

He avoided looking directly at McLoan. Before that, he had to school his own reaction into showing not the faintest trace of recognition. They were two perfect strangers, meeting for a business transaction. Only one they in out of the dark could they see one another properly, anyway. But Harry could already see that time had taken its toll on Brendan as much as him. He was no longer skinny and lithe, but larger with a heavily receding hairline. What was left of his once brilliant red hair had turned pale grey. He also peered at the world through thick rimmed spectacles. But the youth he had once been was still recognisable. It was definitely him. He even retained the chatty, affable manners that had made him so easy to talk to as an Asset.

"This is dead on actually; very nice," he commented, looking around at the empty wooden pallets. "Well, we normally wouldn't be dealing in narcotics either. But as you said yourself, business and trade is so tight right now we have no choice. The Irish Republican Army must generate capital, like any other business. We need money to further our campaign."

Harry noted use of the name "Irish Republican Army" and remembered Ros' mocking words "I Can't Believe it's not the IRA". That was no longer the case. McLoan no longer recognised his organisation as a dissident one, or any splinter group. They were out to usurp the Provisionals as the official army of the Northern Irish nationalists. For another moment, Harry kept his back turned to the other man.

"I wish I could offer refreshment, but as you can see, we're still a little under-equipped," he said, apologetically.

"Don't worry about it," said McLoan, now moving about in the background.

When Harry turned to get a proper look at him, he was inspecting the structure of the warehouse. His attention elsewhere, it was impossible to gage his reaction. However, old habits came swiftly back to Harry and he slipped effortlessly into his new persona. He only checked in on reality every so often, just to see if the plan was progressing. Although he could not see what McLoan was scrutinising so intently, he could guess at why.

"If you're looking for somewhere to store weapons, I am sure we can come to some arrangement," he suggested, cordially. "At only a small cost, of course."

Finally, McLoan turned to face him. Evidently, the suggestion pleased him. "Now that's something we would definitely be interested in. We always need secure places for certain shipments. The only problem, from what I can see, is access. We would need a key."

McLoan's gaze was directed squarely at him as he spoke, but there was no recognition there. Harry moved forwards, into the light.

"Obviously, we would need assurances that our stuff would not be touched-"

"Here, you know what, if so much as a stray nail goes missing from here while we're sharing it, let me know and I'll conduct a full investigation," McLoan explained. Still acting the policeman, after all these years. "The Irish Republican Army does not tolerate thieves."

_Sanctimonious bastard_. "That's something of a reassurance."

McLoan's eyes narrowed, but only briefly. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then changed his mind. Meanwhile, Harry defiantly held his gaze.

"I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," he said, calmly. Inwardly, he urged that penny to drop.

"You know, I can't shake this feeling we've met," said McLoan, sounding more curious than disconcerted. "Is this your first time in Belfast?"

"Funny you should mention, actually. It isn't. Far from it, in fact," Harry explained, still casual, still calm. Every time he thought of Bill, of his friend's charred remains, he deliberately batted the memories away. Placid and calm. He needed to stay completely collected. But that didn't stop the past intruding. "Not sure if we've met, though."

McLoan was looking now. Really looking. The lines around his grey eyes crinkled deep as he scrutinised Harry to point of discomfiture.

"So, the gear?" McLoan asked, clearly trying to bring himself back around to business. But Harry could tell he was troubled now.

"Yes, my nephew has that. He's out in the car," answered Harry. He held McLoan's gaze as he called out to Will. "Sean! Get in here!"

As per the instructions, Will was hesitating before making an entrance. Meanwhile, the silence spiralled uncomfortably. McLoan took a step back towards the far wall, while Harry positioned himself closer to the door. One hand crept into his jacket, beneath the lapel where the gun was nestled against his ribs. The only sound he could hear now was the wings of a moth beating against the electric bulb overhead.

"I do know you," McLoan said, his voice low as he squinted back at Harry. "I know you, I know I do. Who the fuck are you?"

"A ghost," Harry murmured, softly.

His hand tightened round the butt of the gun, drawing it slowly as Will materialised from the darkness outside, moving to stand by Harry's side. As per the instructions, Will remained silent as Harry aimed the gun at McLoan. Stunned, McLoan turned from Harry to Will, fixing on the younger man and paling. His pupils dilated, eyes widening as he shrank quickly against the wall.

_He knows_, Harry thought. _He knows now._

"You!" McLoan's jaw hit his chest as he gasped. "You're dead. I killed you." He was addressing Harry, not Will. "And who is that? I know him, too. What the fuck is this? A ghost can't pull the trigger, so what do you want?"

"You'd be surprised at what ghosts can do," said Will.

Instinctively, Harry repositioned himself so that he was directly in front of Will, forming a human shield to protect him. All the while, his hand did not so much as tremble as he trained the gun on McLoan. _'Just shoot the bastard,'_ Lucas had advised. But it was too late for that. It was too easy. His finger curled around the trigger, squeezing it just as he trained the bullet at the man's thigh. It hit the target almost instantaneously, causing McLoan to drop to the floor in great pain.

"You bastard!" he shouted, the sentiment reverberating around the warehouse.

Harry didn't move except to train the gun at McLoan's head again. One false move, and the next would be straight through the brain. Lights out. Blood from the thigh injury pooled over the stone floor, hot and sticky it merged with years of accumulated dirt. He gripped at it, squeezing the injury tight, turning his hands slick and red. He could no longer see Will, not without turning from McLoan. But he could sense the younger man remaining in place by the door.

"Who am I?" asked Harry.

"This is murder," McLoan spat through laboured breaths.

"Oh really, Brendan, you of all people should know what murder is," Harry goaded. "You're not even fucking dead yet."

Sweat was beading on McLoan's brow now. He looked like a pig before slaughter. But when he opened his mouth again, he laughed. Laughing with some gusto for several minutes. His dilated eyes now looked past Harry and he pointed a blood dripping hand towards Will.

"She was pregnant," he laughed. "I remember it now. She – the other one's wife – was pregnant, and you scared me for a minute there, boy! Your father cried for you. I can tell you that. He fucking cried for you, right enough."

Harry swallowed hard, tightening his grip on the gun to stop his shaking. He no longer needed the pretence of calmness. It was all out in the open now. McLoan lowered his hand, returning it to the gaping, weeping hole in his thigh. It was a non-fatal injury, but a bloody painful one.

"William, come here!" Harry called, still not taking his eye off McLoan.

He heard Will approach, coming to a rest at his side. He too was transfixed on the injured terrorist, but he seemed beyond speech.

"Tell this man why he grew up without a father," said Harry. "Tell him everything, and I might just let you live. But you fucking explain to him now!"

Beside him, Will was as taut as a bow string.

"Are you serious?" McLoan cried back at them. "You let me go and you'll go down for this!"

"No, I won't," Harry replied, once more calm. "You and I both know that won't happen. It never does. I'm British Intelligence, after all. We never go down for what we do to your sort. You know that. Where are the Bloody Sunday paras now? The soldiers who shot the Ballymurphy Five and the Falls Road kids? They're in England and enjoying a nice, cosy retirement without a stain on their character, that's where."

He was winding him deliberately. Bringing him to the boil as his eyes flashed angrily.

"We were soldiers," he countered. "We were all soldiers. You knew that. Bill fucking Crombie knew that. It was a dirty war and we all pulled dirty tricks to make it what it was."

"Where did you take him?" Will found his voice. "My father. Where did you take him? Where was he for those two weeks? Just tell me."

McLoan snapped round, looking directly back at Will again. "He came to us," he said, his voice growing weak now. "He just walked right up to us, saying this one was dead-" he broke off to nod towards Harry. "He wanted to negotiate. But we needed his intel. We had him, and we couldn't ever let him go-"

"This is all lovely, but Will didn't ask for justifications; he asked for facts," Harry cut in.

"It was a disused meat processing plant on the Shore Road, North Belfast. There's a small housing estate called Bawnmore. But the plant you're looking for was facing the road, a big picture of a red mushroom on the board," McLoan answered. "It's still there now, but it's been taken over. It is back in business and you can't get inside. There's nothing left of those days. But back then it was empty, just meat hooks hanging from the ceiling and a few knives. We hung him up and one of the other fellas, Patrick McCann his name was, he did all the work. He had a blow torch … some other stuff."

He trailed off, still looking at Will. Will, in return, stood his ground and did not flinch. From the tail of his eye, Harry could see him standing firm. But the tension was like electric in the air. It crackled. McLoan sprawled across the ground, helpless and immobilised, covered in his own congealing blood.

"Listen to me, kid," he rasped. "Your father was a soldier and so was I. This is what soldiers do to each other. It wasn't aimed at you, or your mother. It was aimed at the British State. You understand?"

"My father was not the British State!" Will shot back, angrily. "He was my father! He was somebody's son, somebody's husband, somebody's best friend … and my Dad."

"What did he reveal?" Harry asked. "Did he tell you anything?"

He already knew the answer. But he wanted Will to hear from him. McLoan began by shaking his head.

"Fuck all!" he laughed again. "Absolutely jack shit."

Will trembled; Harry could feel as the younger man was right beside him. "Did he say anything?"

"Nothing. Just kept going on about the baby. The baby this, the baby that. It was his safe place. He just retreated inside, pretending none of it was happening and focused on something else. Do it for the baby. Think of the baby. Only the baby. It was his diversion. You see it all the time."

Now Will buckled and gagged. He managed to not vomit, but he heaved. Looking down at McLoan in utter disgust. "See it all the fucking time?" he echoed, contemptuously. "Did this a lot, did you? Torture and murder people! That's not what soldiers do to one another, you fuck wad!"

"Oh really!" McLoan retorted, all wide-eyed surprise. "What's this, then?" He threw his arms open, revealing the ruin of his thigh.

Enough. A shutter dropped in Harry's mind as a cut-off point was finally reached. _Bury the hatchet now_, he thought to himself.

"Will," he flatly intoned. "Leave us now."

McLoan was laughing again. Sanity, it seemed, was leaking out that hole in his leg. "As soon as you walk out that door, boy, he's going to kill me!"

Will paused, looked back over his shoulder. "I know," he said, casually. "See ya."

Harry waited until Will was gone. Just as at the start, he was alone with McLoan. The two of them looked at each other unflinchingly.

"Éirinn go Brách," he whispered, closing his eyes. "tiocfaidh ár lá."

"Don't kid yourself, Brendan," Harry answered, pulling the trigger.

The blast of the gunshot filled the room, shaking the walls and sending a cloud of dust showering over the dead man. Harry remained standing there for several minutes, looking down at him. Motionless, death quickened. It was over for him far faster than it was for Bill Crombie. But Harry wasn't an animal. He drew a deep breath, turned around and walked away. Now he had his peace and reconciliation.

* * *

As if he had been physically struck, Will flinched as the gunshot shattered the night. But once the echo faded out across the waters of the lough, a great burden lifted from him. It was over. Harry had put an end to it. He took a moment to get his breath and let Harry lead him back to the car. Shaking and jittery still, it was just relief. Relief that something so bad, so insidious, had been taken from him. It had been there so long he almost didn't know how to function without it. But he was sure he would find a way.

That night, they went back to their hotel and Harry pressed a hot, spiced whiskey onto him. He drank it while perched on the edge of his bed. Still dazed and bewildered. He looked up at Harry through wide eyes, watching as he started packing up their belongings. There was no point hanging around.

"I can do that," he said.

"No you can't. You'll be sleeping."

The next thing he was aware of was the late morning sunshine spilling through the windows. His head felt thick, like his brain had been replaced with cotton wool. Still fully clothed, he was lying flat on his back so at least Harry put him to bed properly after lacing his drink. Will thought he should be angry about that, but he hadn't the heart. Besides, he would never have slept otherwise.

Still sluggish from the sleeping pills, Harry did the driving that morning. They followed the Shore Road, all along the lough. Will hadn't realised just how wide it was. Thirty to forty miles wide as they headed north. But the Shore Road was staunchly Protestant looking, with its UVF murals and Union Jack flags on every lamppost. But it was seven miles north of the city that they reached the tiny nationalist enclave of Bawnmore. The meat processing plant was exactly where McLoan said it would be. Complete with hoarding bearing a picture of a large, red mushroom with a jolly, smiley face painted on it.

They got out of the car in silence and looked up at the plant where his father died. A soft wind swept in from the sea, ruffling the undergrowth and Will's hair alike. Side by side, they thought their own private thoughts as they took in the bright yellow walls from the car park. This is where it happened. He knew that now. Just like his father, Brendan McLoan's death had not been mentioned anywhere, despite his body being carried away in the early hours of that morning. It was another secret of the past, whispering away into the depths of obscurity. The world continued, blissful in its ignorance.

Will thought of his father, inside those walls, hanging from butchers hooks. He could almost hear the blow torches. But his father said nothing. He really had died a hero's death. He hadn't been entirely wrong, in those naïve days of his childhood. While deep in his own thoughts, he felt Harry touch his elbow. When he looked, he had a single carnation in his hands.

"Take it," he said.

Will raised a pained smile. "Both of us," he replied. "Together."

Together, they set the lone blossom down on the railing outside the plant. No one would notice it. But still, Will plucked some of the petals and let them blow away on the wind as the first tear fell from his eye. As small a tribute to his father as it was, he didn't want the petals staying there. He wanted them to be free, just like Bill Crombie. Free, and far away from this dreadful place. He watched them go, pulled on by the sea breeze, small spots of vivid pink, scattering over the grey. _Go,_ he thought, _just go now._

He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his jacket, sniffing audibly. But when he looked back up at the blank, dark windows of the plant Harry blocked his view. A heavy arm fell over his shoulders as he was pulled into a bear hug. The last of his resolve shaking before falling away.

"Come on, now," said Harry, quietly. "Let's get you home."

For once, he did not argue. Will allowed Harry to lead him back to the car, where they started up the engine and pulled out on the road home.

* * *

**Thank you again to everyone who has read and reviewed this story; it means a lot. Thank you.**

**Just the epilogue to go now and that will be the end.**

**Translation of Brendan's last words:**

**Éirinn go Brách**_** – Ireland forever.**_

**Tiocfaidh ár lá**_** – Our day will come.**_


	12. Albatross

**Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story. It means a lot, so thank you. Anyway, this is only the epilogue to tie up loose ends. Enjoy!**

**Apologies for the slight delay in getting this story finished but, regardless, here it is.**

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Albatross**

"_The self-same moment I could pray;  
And from my neck so free  
The Albatross fell off, and sank  
Like lead into the sea."_

_(Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge)_

"A prominent dissident Republican from West Belfast was found dead in the early hours of this morning. Early reports suggest that fifty-four year old Brendan McLoan died of a heart attack…"

The newsreader's voice filled the kitchen as Ruth waited for the kettle to boil. She reached down to pick up the cat and whispered in his ear: '_bullshit_'. Unless it was the world's biggest coincidence and McLoan really had dropped down dead just as Harry had gone out there to even their old score. In which case, she realised, she would have been somewhat disappointed.

Either way, she finally breathed easily knowing that Harry was safe. As promised, he had sent her a message that simply read: 'it's done'. But hearing it on the news, even in its cryptic form, had made the deed real. This game was done. There were no winners; there never could be. But the score was even and now all sides could beat an honourable retreat. Just as the kettle boiled and a cloud of steam caught the broad morning sun her phoned bleeped again to mark the arrival of another text. _'On the tarmac, about to take off. Put the kettle on!'_

A smile played at the corners of her lip as she dropped the cat and grabbed her car keys.

Barely an hour and a half later and he was back in her arms. The two of them standing entwined in the middle of the airport while Will veered sharply round them to give them privacy, hauling his suitcase behind him. But Ruth paid him little mind. She had Harry back and in more ways than just the one. Now it was over; now they could start again.

When they drew apart, their eyes still locked into each other. After all that arguing and shouting the last week had brought, very little now needed to be said. The three of them headed outside, dodging the influx of passengers making their way to check in, flight terminals and departure gates. The spy in her clocked every face that passed, finding some strange romance in the knowledge that every soul in that building at that moment would be scattered across the whole globe within a few hours. So many leaves on an autumn breeze.

To prevent them being pulled apart, Harry grasped her hand until they made it out of the door and into the open. Will veered off again, dragging his suitcase over to the taxi stand and digging for his wallet with his free hand. At which point, Ruth grabbed him.

"Come back with us," she said.

He looked as though he was about to politely decline, until Harry took command of the situation.

"He'd love to."

Augmenting this statement by taking command of Will's suitcase, the younger man gave in and thanked Ruth as he got in the back of the car. Once home, they shared a pot of tea and sandwiches, talking easily with none of the tension that had so dominated recent events. It was as though a storm had finally passed and cleared the air between them. In its place, a timid semblance of reality.

* * *

Only that night, once they were alone and had been fed and washed, did Harry mention it. They were lying in bed, still warm and breathless from making love for the first time since the trouble began. Not in the least bit tired but still in need of that physical proximity, they lay in each other's arms and savoured the post coital come down.

"I shot him in the thigh," he confessed. "Then I shot him in the head."

They were back on an even enough keel for him to let his timing revert to its usual state of terrible. Something Ruth seemed to have gained a deeper understanding of as she no longer saw fit to even mention it.

"So, it really is over now?" she asked, rolling over to face him.

"It's over," he confirmed. "Not Bill. There will always be a space there, where he should be. There will always be someone … missing."

He had never said it before. But it was only as the second bullet smashed through McLoan's skull that Harry realised Will wasn't the only one who had become fixated on Bill Crombie's death and let his life fall by the wayside. Not only had he let the murder eclipse the man, but he had let it dominate his life and cloud his judgements. He had carried the guilt so long he had forgotten what they once meant to one another. Instead of treasuring those memories he had allowed it to become his own personal albatross; a curse he was doomed to relive wherever he went.

"That's understandable," Ruth replied. "People like that, they don't just slip in and out of our lives without leaving some trace."

The last thing Harry wanted to do was sound trite. But he knew he wouldn't have it any other way.

* * *

Although Will returned to an empty flat, his isolation wasn't permanent. The weekend following his return from Belfast saw him once more on the road, heading north to the place where his father grew up. Catherine came with him, reading directions off a scrap of paper her father passed to her. Despite several diversions, they made it in good time. Harry and Ruth were already at the spot, waiting for them.

The town was still small. Quaint, with its cobbled streets and grey stone walls. A river flowed through the middle of the main town. While the sun was out, it was idyllic. They passed his old school, Harry filling him in on the facts as they all gravitated towards the nearest pub. Probably the same one that was there when they were kids.

No, it was no substitute for his father telling him all this in person. Nothing ever would be. But he no longer felt like he was completely alone in his search for the truth. He knew he probably never was truly alone in that. It was difficult for him to articulate. But the sense of absence has eased off; something inside him had let go. As they sat at the wooden table outside the pub, basking in the warm summer air, he looked around at each of them in turn. Nothing could feel the same now that he had been led into this fold.

Someone took a hold of his hand. He turned round to see Catherine smiling at him.

"Come with me," she said, standing up.

"Where?" he asked.

She was already on her feet, stepping out from behind the bench with her hand still in his.

"Just follow," she replied.

And so he did. Wherever she was leading him.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading. Apologies for the lacklustre ending, but this was more difficult than I thought it would be. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. **

**I'll be totally honest and admit that I have precisely zero ideas for any future fics, but I daresay I'll be returning at some point. Thank you again! **


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